\n<\/p>\n
A university professor has set her team\u2019s research on the plight of Florida\u2019s declining oyster population to music, aiming to inform a receptive new audience about the \u201ccatastrophic\u201d scale of the crisis.<\/p>\n
Heather O\u2019Leary, professor of anthropology at St Petersburg\u2019s University of South Florida (USF), partnered with student composers and faculty from its music department to create Oysters Ain\u2019t Safe, a soft jazz alternative to crunching data into a \u201cboring\u201d technical report.<\/p>\n
The arrangement, she said, \u201cuses the universal language of music\u201d to express the impact of over-harvesting, habitat loss, the climate crisis and the spread of forever chemicals on Florida\u2019s fragile oyster reefs.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t probably spend your Saturday morning or Friday night digging through some of these government databases, but you already have the tools in your body as a hearing person, or looking at or creating art as a visual person to perceive some of it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re watching somebody sing, or dance, parts of your brain light up as though you yourself are dancing or singing, and through that, deeper forms of connection are made. These coastal threats are something we all can relate to. This makes it a lot more approachable and fun, and more about creation and less about dwelling in the anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Leary said there is no intention to make light of the collapse in Florida oyster reefs, which led to fish and wildlife officials suspending oyster harvesting in 2020 for at least a five-year period.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy response to that is we do need a sense of what\u2019s called radical optimism, because when things get too dark, people are only human \u2013 they need to turn away, they need a break,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The creative process featured marine science graduate students working with their school of music counterparts, guided by music professor Matt McCutchen, to interpret data into a performance-ready piece that will be presented live in January at the next USF concert.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe music graduates are familiar with global warming, climate change, climate chaos, all of this, but they\u2019ve never actually delved into the science. That\u2019s just not the flavor of intellectual interest they have,\u201d O\u2019Leary said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they\u2019re sitting there talking with the marine scientists, who are going on dives to see and to feel with their fingers what it feels like when you know the tissue is peeling off of the coral, it\u2019s electrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as the upcoming live performance, the project will feature sheet music, student-created artwork and a music video. The oyster composition follows an earlier, similar collaboration about Florida\u2019s red tide and harmful algae blooms, which O\u2019Leary said began as \u201ca joyful side project\u201d, but which she quickly realized could become a powerful medium.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe students are thinking through scales of time and change, about the clicks and clacks that would be in a piece about coral, the more funky saxophone types of sounds you would think of when you\u2019re thinking about dead fish washing up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s like this fundamental and very experiential somatic kind of knowledge. When you\u2019re staring at the scariest numbers, the black-and-white figures in front of you, that can feel pretty intimidating.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if you\u2019re experimenting with \u2018what color would that number be?\u2019 or \u2018what kind of instrument would pick up how I feel when I see that statistic?\u2019, it\u2019s more creative. That\u2019s what we need, more things that bring people together.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Leary said the music of Florida\u2019s oyster crisis can resonate in the response to the global climate emergency.<\/p>\n \u201cEverywhere in the world, we all have our concerns, about things like having the right amount of healthy, safe water for ourselves and our families and our neighbors,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo to do it in a way where it\u2019s not \u2018I\u2019m not a bossy scientist\u2019 but instead \u2018Come play with me,\u2019 that\u2019s how we make progress on these things. It\u2019s inviting more people into the tent of being good listeners.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A university professor has set her team\u2019s research on the plight of Florida\u2019s declining oyster population to music, aiming to inform a receptive new audience about the \u201ccatastrophic\u201d scale of the crisis. Heather O\u2019Leary, professor of anthropology at St Petersburg\u2019s University of South Florida (USF), partnered with student composers and faculty from its music department<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[9401,3649,10975,2375,5239,686,10976,516,2315],"class_list":{"0":"post-18049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-decline","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-floridas","11":"tag-jazz","12":"tag-meets","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-oyster","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-told"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}