Coastal Conservatory
North American Observatory
The Coastal Futures Conservatory is an initiative of the University of Virginia to integrate arts and humanities into the investigation of coastal change. Working with the Virginia Coast Reserve, a Long-Term Ecological Research site funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Conservatory focuses on listening as a domain in which to create new ways of experiencing, understanding, and responding to the dynamics reshaping coasts.
Listening is a form of inquiry that can immerse hearers in living environments and connect people across boundaries. The Conservatory organizes collaborative inquiry and public engagement around several broad forms of listening: to field recordings and designed listening stations, as practices for researchers and educators; to scientific data, by sonifying long-term data sets and creating public performances in which audiences can interact with the music and the underlying research; across disciplines, by commissioning humanities-based research on coastal change and convening multidisciplinary lab sessions to exchange and design new research; and across political boundaries by exchanging research with Global South partner sites, by inviting indigenous participants to shape research practices and questions.
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