Sonic Kayaks Open Hacklab

We invite you to join us to collaboratively build the Sonic Kayak, in our second open development session. Bring an explorative mind and experience in any field, and come to tinker with electronics, coding, sound art, boats and climate science. Or - just drop in to see what we are doing.

Kayaks will be rigged with a bolt-on unit consisting of under-water environmental sensors (we'll start with temperature) and above-water speakers. The sensor data generated as the kayak is paddled will trigger sonifications, generating music to provide the paddler with an extra dimension of senses with which to explore the underwater climate. The sonification will be developed with award winning sound artist and composer, Kaffe Matthews. The project is being developed in collaboration with climate science researchers, offering for the first time a citizen-science approach to collecting valuable aquatic microclimate data. This builds on work by the Bicrophonic Research Institute.

We will be joined by sound artist Kaffe Matthews and marine biologist Dr. Kirsty Kemp.

This is a free drop-in session, but please email us to let us know if you are coming so we can keep an eye on numbers.

This project is funded by FEAST (Cornwall Council and Arts Council England) and the British Science Association.