BUOY at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory Biological Field Station

Iowa Lakeside Laboratory in northwest Iowa has a research buoy installed in Lake Okoboji, a very popular recreational lake in the state. This buoy contains a host of sensors that are reporting environmental data as well as data about the water at regular intervals. During my time as artist in residence at the research station, I programmed a system that collected the data from the sensor and used it to generate, control and modify sounds using particular data points from the sensors monitoring below the surface. The values used in this composition are water temperature, pH level, dissolved oxygen saturation, dissolved oxygen in milligrams per liter and CO2 levels. The values are collected every ten minutes from the buoy. These ten-minute segments are then performed as sound by the system in 1 second intervals. 10-minute data intervals = 1 second sound intervals. The audio sample being manipulated is a field recording of the dawn chorus collected from the Lakeside Lab property near the lake early one morning.