Florida students combine music and data to raise awareness about the environment : NPR

Dead fish washed ashore during a 2018 red tide in Sanibel, Florida.

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Dead fish washed ashore during a 2018 red tide in Sanibel, Florida.

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An anthropology professor at the University of South Florida recently published an article that she knew almost no one would read. At least, not outside his domain.

The paper, co-authored with three other professors, focused on the impact of algae blooms and coral reef depletion on the region’s tourism industry. Work was dreary, says Heather O’Leary. This involved tracking visitors’ reactions to the environment on social media.

“For months, part of the data was just reading tweets: dead fish, dead fish, dead fish,” she recalls. “We were really thinking every day about the Gulf of Mexico and the waters around us, particularly St. Pete as a peninsula, those risks and the risks to our coastal economy.”

But attending concerts at the USF School of Music inspired and delighted her. So she contacted her director of groups, Matthew McCutchen.

“I study climate change and what’s happening to coral reefs,” he recalls. “And I have all this data and I’d like to know if there’s a way to turn it into music.”

Indeed, there was. Composition professor Paul Reller worked with students to match pitch, rhythm and duration to the data. It came to life, O’Leary says, in a way that simply doesn’t exist on a spreadsheet.

Matthew McCutchen, Heather O’Leary and Hunter Pomeroy at the University of South Florida Symphonic Band & Wind Ensemble performance at USF Concert Hall.

Aiden Michael McKahan/University of South Florida

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Matthew McCutchen, Heather O’Leary and Hunter Pomeroy at the University of South Florida Symphonic Band & Wind Ensemble performance at USF Concert Hall.

Aiden Michael McKahan/University of South Florida

“My students were really excited to start thinking about how other students, music students, were hearing patterns that we hadn’t seen in some of the rehearsals,” she says. With music, she added, “you can start to feel, with different parts of your mind and your body, that patterns are happening and that they are important.”

In this case, she said, the trends revealed the economic impact of pollution on Florida’s coastal communities. This complex challenge is a symptom of other, more serious problems. “The world is going to face more and more of these so-called ‘wicked problems,’ those that require multiple people with different types of training and experience to solve,” O’Leary says.

The University of South Florida is excited about this lineup. Other departments are getting involved, including communications, education and library science. Today, a group of professors and students are working to bring music and environment together in related projects, such as an augmented reality experience based on this composition. The group, which calls itself CRESCENDO (Communicating Research Expanding through Sonification and Community-Engaged Neuroaesthetic Data-literacy Opportunities), wants to raise awareness about algal blooms, data literacy, and the democratization of science.

Edited for radio and web by Rose Friedman. Produced for the web by Beth Novey. Produced for radio by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.