January 06, 2005Whale Beams
I've been having a series of synchronikitties lately relating to whales, which seemed to begin just before the tsunami hit. I don't know if it's related in any way and I'm not one to speculate, but it's fun to ponder all the same.
Now, I'm rather fond of whales, so I'm not in the least way bothered by this and am quite amused, in fact. I've even been asking other folks I know if they're into whales at all and if so, if they have favorite links and such and now of course I've got more to read than I could ever hope for. I'm going to post what I've run across here just to get it somewhere so it doesn't end up off in the abyss of ideas and occurences that I'd like to actually remember, so here goes (and pardon if there are some sentence fragments or spelling errors throughout-- I'm running pretty ragged these days and am a bit tired from doing non-stop data entry at my dayjob, so typing may be less than perfect.)
It all seemingly began with a dream about whales. I should have actually written the dream down so I could remember it but alas, I only recall a vivid memory of having dreamt of a whale or possibly more than one. I've been really bad about that lately, forgetting to use my dream diary for just these sorts of moments.
Spacey pixie...!
The very next day was when I found out the tsunami hit. A few minutes after that the thought of my whale dream appeared in my mind. I haven't been able to shake it for days and really haven't wanted to. Something totally ultra-psychedelic about the pattern so I decided to just roll with it.
A few days later I was sitting enjoying my morning cup of tea and dAS had the television on and was doing a sort of "Bavarian Teevee" thing where you flip through the channels and make visual and audio cutups as you go. He ended up stopping on a channel playing an episode of California's Gold (one of our favorite shows) titled HUELL'S WHALE ADVENTURE (Part One). The show had a profound effect on me, especially seeing the relationship between a mother and baby whale "playing" with the folks in the little boat and coming around close enough to be stroked on the back and head. I have only been fortunate enough to see whales outside of captivity once in my lifetime, which was many years ago when I lived in Santa Cruz. Went out on one of those nifty whale-watching tours and saw two whales mating, but they were nowhere even near the boat. I can't remember but I think we even had to use binocs to see them at all. I've yearned for an experience like what these folks on teevee were experiencing but nevertheless, watching them put me immediately into a trance and I could not tear myself away.
And so...
I was over at Easy Bake Coven earlier today and was both surprised and delighted to find that she had also put up a link about whales ("...specifically a research program dedicated to interfacing dolphins and whales through music, art, and ceremony...")
And finally, upon getting home from work this evening and seating myself once more in front of "the box" I decided to clean out some of my bookmarks and through all the clicking around, for some reason this blog was amongst the cast of thousands and up at the top of my list, and lo and behold, the first thing I see is a post titled Thar Be Whales Here! which contained a link to a truly bizarre finding:
52 Hz sound - blue whale call?
52 Hz "whale-like" signals were first reported by Watkins et al.(2000). On average these tones had a center frequency of 51.75 Hz and lasted 5-7 sec. These tones are usually produced in groups of 2-6 and were recorded in the NE Pacific.
bloop sound (241K .wav file)
The recorded signal has been sped up 10 times.
Here's another article about the 52 Hz Whale
One last thing I'll leave off with is a beautiful piece of work by a woman named Lisa Walker who I wasn't familiar with until stumbling across the EarthEar Online Sound Center. This is an excerpt (RealAudio) from a piece she calls Tenakee.
Now, I'm rather fond of whales, so I'm not in the least way bothered by this and am quite amused, in fact. I've even been asking other folks I know if they're into whales at all and if so, if they have favorite links and such and now of course I've got more to read than I could ever hope for. I'm going to post what I've run across here just to get it somewhere so it doesn't end up off in the abyss of ideas and occurences that I'd like to actually remember, so here goes (and pardon if there are some sentence fragments or spelling errors throughout-- I'm running pretty ragged these days and am a bit tired from doing non-stop data entry at my dayjob, so typing may be less than perfect.)
It all seemingly began with a dream about whales. I should have actually written the dream down so I could remember it but alas, I only recall a vivid memory of having dreamt of a whale or possibly more than one. I've been really bad about that lately, forgetting to use my dream diary for just these sorts of moments.
Spacey pixie...!
The very next day was when I found out the tsunami hit. A few minutes after that the thought of my whale dream appeared in my mind. I haven't been able to shake it for days and really haven't wanted to. Something totally ultra-psychedelic about the pattern so I decided to just roll with it.
A few days later I was sitting enjoying my morning cup of tea and dAS had the television on and was doing a sort of "Bavarian Teevee" thing where you flip through the channels and make visual and audio cutups as you go. He ended up stopping on a channel playing an episode of California's Gold (one of our favorite shows) titled HUELL'S WHALE ADVENTURE (Part One). The show had a profound effect on me, especially seeing the relationship between a mother and baby whale "playing" with the folks in the little boat and coming around close enough to be stroked on the back and head. I have only been fortunate enough to see whales outside of captivity once in my lifetime, which was many years ago when I lived in Santa Cruz. Went out on one of those nifty whale-watching tours and saw two whales mating, but they were nowhere even near the boat. I can't remember but I think we even had to use binocs to see them at all. I've yearned for an experience like what these folks on teevee were experiencing but nevertheless, watching them put me immediately into a trance and I could not tear myself away.
And so...
I was over at Easy Bake Coven earlier today and was both surprised and delighted to find that she had also put up a link about whales ("...specifically a research program dedicated to interfacing dolphins and whales through music, art, and ceremony...")
And finally, upon getting home from work this evening and seating myself once more in front of "the box" I decided to clean out some of my bookmarks and through all the clicking around, for some reason this blog was amongst the cast of thousands and up at the top of my list, and lo and behold, the first thing I see is a post titled Thar Be Whales Here! which contained a link to a truly bizarre finding:
52 Hz sound - blue whale call?
52 Hz "whale-like" signals were first reported by Watkins et al.(2000). On average these tones had a center frequency of 51.75 Hz and lasted 5-7 sec. These tones are usually produced in groups of 2-6 and were recorded in the NE Pacific.
bloop sound (241K .wav file)
The recorded signal has been sped up 10 times.
Here's another article about the 52 Hz Whale
One last thing I'll leave off with is a beautiful piece of work by a woman named Lisa Walker who I wasn't familiar with until stumbling across the EarthEar Online Sound Center. This is an excerpt (RealAudio) from a piece she calls Tenakee.
