A new scientific paper has been published in the research journal Frontiers in Remote Sensing titled ‘Automatic detection of unidentified fish sounds: a comparison of traditional deep learning with machine learning’ authored by Xavier Mouy et al, which analyzed week-long hydrophone recordings of the Coral City Camera site at PortMiami in order to detect fish sounds.
The researchers found that using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) enabled detection of fish sounds that both human analysts and traditional spectrogram data analysis otherwise could not detect. The CNN was trained using hydrophone recordings made in British Columbia, but proved accurate in the novel environment at PortMiami, even despite significant background noises from boats. The software developed for this study is open-source and available to other researchers.
Stay tuned in the coming months as we prepare to connect a hydrophone to the Coral City Camera and provide an audio channel to the YouTube livestream. If possible, we aim to incorporate real-time analysis of the underwater sounds to help monitor and track fish activity.
Watch thefull Projections of a Coral City program above.
The sun has set on Projections of a Coral City, our largest installation to date, and we are thankful for everyone who made this monumental work possible. From the Knight Foundation’s continued support of our mission, to the collaborative spirit of the Arsht Center, to the hundreds of thousands of people who witnessed this installation: we are eternally grateful.
Projections of a Coral City was the 15-year culmination of our goal to create a new mythology for the city of Miami — one that tells the story of past, present, and future sea-level rise and fall and the ouroboros of architectural development — of the ancient coral reef tract’s calcium carbonate structures and its re-use millennia later in concrete skyscrapers of present day. We hope that Projections of a Coral City shed light on the sea-level rise projections referenced in the project’s title, and how the City’s buildings and infrastructure might be reclaimed by coral as an artificial reef should humanity not act to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change, to which Miami is among the most vulnerable cities on Earth.
Special Thanks to the Knight Foundation, whose generous support made POACC possible; the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, who graciously hosted the event; the dream team of creatives that helped us bring POACC to life; and Light Harvest / A3 Visual for the absolutely stunning projection display.
We are ecstatic to announce Projections of a Coral City, a large-scale projection-mapping installation to be presented on the exterior of the Knight Concert Hall nightly, 6PM-12AM, during Miami Art Week from Tuesday, November 29 through Saturday, December 3, 2022. Projections of a Coral City, featuring macroscopic images of corals native to Miami and from around the world, is a monumental artwork and the largest projection of corals ever presented globally. Projections of a Coral City is made possible through the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Miami is a coral city. Built with marine limestone mined from the Everglades, its concrete skyline stands like corals colonizing the fossilized reef ridge on which the city was built. Miami and its maritime environment are inextricably connected geologically, historically, culturally and economically. Engaging residents and visitors with Miami’s coral reefs and waters connects them to the literal foundation of the city and to its future.
The corals featured in Projections of a Coral City were grown on flat tiles and 3D-printed scale models of the Knight Concert Hall over many years in our Miami laboratory, and subsequently photographed and enlarged to envelop the building’s southwest side. These aquacultured corals include the colorful, native Ricordea florida corallimorph. Corallimorphs are an understudied group of soft corals that scientists predict will proliferate in a world where oceans are acidified and stony corals can no longer calcify into reefs. Projections of a Coral City reimagines the Knight Concert Hall’s terraced form designed by architect César Pelli as an ever-morphing coral head and, as the sea-level rise projections referenced in the project’s title portend, suggests how the City’s buildings and infrastructure might be reclaimed by coral as an artificial reef should humanity not act to prevent and mitigate sea-level rise.
An ambient soundscape foreshadowing the City’s future by Coral Morphologic and Nick León will play in tandem with the projections on the Arsht Center’s Thomson Plaza for the Arts on Biscayne Boulevard.
Today, October 6th, marks 15 years of Coral Morphologic! Here’s us celebrating @ CM HQ with the lab cats. Thank You to everyone who has shown us love and support over the years: you know who you are and we love you too!
Avey Tare, Geologist, and Deakin performing Tangerine Reef live.
This past Saturday, Animal Collective and we debuted the live version of Tangerine Reef at David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption. Aquatic sights and sounds enmeshed to immerse the audience of Brooklyn Steel in the extraterrestrial underwater environ of Tangerine Reef.
Thank you to David Lynch for inviting us and the Festival of Disruption team for an amazing production. Stay tuned for the official release of Tangerine Reef this August.
The Tangerine Reef crew: Avey Tare, John McSwain, Deakin, J.D. McKay, Geologist, and Colin Foord.
We are psyched to share that Colin provided the spoken word intro to the song ‘Coral Lords’ from Animal Collective member Avey Tare‘s beautiful new album, Eucalyptus. The passage reads:
“Corals were the first timekeepers of Planet Earth. For more than half a billion years, their internal clocks have been synchronized with the sun and the moon. However, it would take life several hundred million years of further evolution before finally crawling out of from beneath the liquid lens of the ocean and into the open air where it would develop the consciousness necessary to ask the question, then the intelligence needed to invent the technology to empirically measure its objective reality. Thus, the purpose of life is to quantify the nature of the cosmos itself. The development of symbiosis between coral and humankind appears as a harbinger for the final stages of life on earth. Our ouroboros is nearly complete.”
Check out the video from Colin’s TEDx talk, where he highlights Miami’s urban corals – specifically a rare hybrid “super” coral that may help in future rehabilitation of Florida’s fragile reefs.
