OCEAN EARS - Sound Swimming with Whales

Objective

OCEAN EARS is a living, interactive, geospatial map containing immersive sonic information of whale and ocean sounds. It aims to deepen public empathy for marine life—especially whales—through hyperreal immersive listening experiences that simulate being virtually underwater and sensing their acoustic reality. Using machine learning, the project will build a large-scale, open-science, intelligently searchable archive of marine sounds, tagged by time, location, species, sex, sound type, and audio features. Visitors will “sound swim” with whales via an oceanographic map interface and virtual reality audio in a novel browser-based application. They will explore the Indian Ocean around East Africa, Madagascar, and Réunion, following migratory trajectories of humpback whales to hear songs, mother-calf calls, grunts, mating sounds, and more. The archive will also include geophonic and anthropogenic noise (e.g. seismic surveys, ship engines) to raise awareness of the damaging effects of underwater noise pollution. Physical installations will extend the experience through infrasound transducers, allowing audiences to feel the ocean’s vibrational energy. The fellowship will support the researcher’s career by advancing skills in AI, XR, marine bioacoustics, and environmental communication. Outcomes include peer-reviewed publications, open-access datasets, participatory exhibitions, and strategic presentations to NGOs and ocean policy stakeholders. The project contributes to public engagement with science, biodiversity protection, and the EU’s mission on healthy oceans. By combining artistic research, extended reality, and machine learning, OCEAN EARS offers a novel model for interdisciplinary environmental engagement. It advances open science and sensory knowledge-sharing to support marine biodiversity, inclusive science communication, and EU missions on climate and healthy oceans.