A Whale's Heart

Waiting for SC

Feeding · bpm ×2.5

Jun 28 · 00:21:06

Depth0.0 m

Heart Rate30.0 bpm

Amplitude1.000

About

The Piece

A Whale's Heart is a data-driven sound installation that sonifies the diving behaviour of a whale using real biologging data. The depth of the whale drives all sonic parameters: amplitude, heart rate, and pitch. The piece explores fragility, scale, and the physiology of the largest animal on Earth.

As the whale descends, its heart slows to as few as 2 beats per minute, the sound fades to near silence, and the pitch drops. At the surface the heart races, the beat is loud and bright. You are listening to 27 hours of a whale's life.

Playback

The dataset spans 23 hours 34 minutes of continuous diving recorded at 1 Hz (one depth sample per second), subsampled to every 10 seconds for sonification (8,488 frames).

Speed	Wall-clock duration	1 data-second =
0.5×	47h 09m	20 real seconds
1×	23h 34m	10 real seconds
2×	11h 47m	5 real seconds

Speed only scrolls the depth curve. The heartbeat tempo is speed-independent — it always matches the whale's actual physiological rhythm at the current depth.

Heart Rate Science

Based on Goldbogen et al. (2019), who attached an ECG recorder to a free-diving blue whale in Monterey Bay — the first direct measurement of heart rate in the world's largest animal.

State	Heart rate
Diving (typical)	4 - 8 bpm
Diving (minimum)	2 bpm
Surface recovery	25 - 37 bpm
Feeding lunge spike	×2.5 above diving min

This installation maps depth to beat interval (time between beats), not BPM directly. The silence between beats grows proportionally with depth — which is what a listener perceives. The aortic arch acts as a hydraulic buffer between the slow, irregular heartbeats.

Goldbogen, J.A. et al. (2019). Extreme bradycardia and tachycardia in the world's largest animal. PNAS, 116(50), 25329-25332.

Feeding Lunges

Blue whales are lunge feeders — they accelerate into dense patches of krill with their mouths open, engulfing up to 80,000 litres of water in a single gulp. Each lunge requires enormous cardiac output.

Detection heuristic: depth > 65m and ascending > 2m per 10-second sample. When a lunge is detected, the heart rate spikes ×2.5 (capped at 75 bpm). Amplitude is deliberately unchanged — the energetic burst of feeding is felt as rhythm acceleration only, not volume change.

Sonification Mapping

Parameter	Surface (0m)	Deep (133m)
Heart rate	30 bpm (2s)	2 bpm (30s)
Amplitude	1.000 (loud)	0.048 (near silent)
Pitch / rate	1.00× (normal)	0.26× (low + slow)
Lunge BPM	×2.5, amplitude unchanged

All parameters are configurable in real time via the ⚙ Mapping panel.

Data Sources

Sound layer — Icelandic whale, 1 Hz depth time series, June 28-29 2018 (27 hours, 97,321 samples). Maximum depth 133.4m. Source: IcelandData/whale_depth.xlsx.

Spatial layer — Pacific blue whale GPS track (2015CA-MK10-00838, female, ~70ft, Point Mugu CA, July-August 2015, 516 fixes after cleaning). Temporary placeholder until Iceland GPS data is obtained. Drives stereo L/R panning.

Blue and Fin Whale Movements, California 2014-2017 + Oregon 2018. DOI: 10.24431/rw1k463. PI: Daniel Palacios + Bruce Mate, Marine Mammal Institute, Oregon State University.

Speaker Layout

Front [0] FL FR [1] ↑ whale ↑ [2] RL RR [3] Rear

Designed for 4-channel playback via UMC404HD. Currently running in stereo mode (channels 0/1) with GPS-driven L/R panning. Quad and ambisonics expansion planned.

Credits

A Whale's Heart — Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson (concept and proposal, aesthetics, installation, art–science dialogue with the specialists), in collaboration with Miguel Angel Crozzoli (music technology, sonification and interaction design, software, composition).

Depth data — Icelandic whale, from Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson's project.

GPS data — Daniel Palacios, Bruce Mate, Tomas Follett; Marine Mammal Institute, Oregon State University.

Science — Goldbogen, J.A. et al. (2019), PNAS.

Development — Built with Claude.ai (Sonnet 4.6) and Claude Code.

Mapping

Look

Timing

Mode

Interval (s)

Heart Rate (BPM)

Curve

At surface

At depth

Lunge ×

Amplitude

Direction

Exponent

Min

Max

Lunge boost

Pitch / Rate

Enable

At surface

At depth

Floor

Spatialization

Speakers

Debug

Console log

Depth Profile Iceland Whale · Jun 28–29 2018 · gate-driven

Heart Rate surface=loud+fast · depth=quiet+slow

Feeding