This is a great article from the NY Times about my friend Mark! Brian was kind enough to introduce me to Mark last year! Thanks Brian!!!!!!! Please check out Mark's site. He's created the most amazing art!!!!! ;)

August 1, 2006

By GRETCHEN CUDA

What do whale songs and wavelets have in common? Quite a bit, and the wavelets have nothing to do with water.

In a Northern California studio, Mark Fischer, an engineer by training, uses wavelets - a technique for processing digital signals - to transform the haunting calls of ocean mammals into movies that visually represent the songs and still images that look like electronic mandalas. (His art can be found at aguasonic.com.)

Mr. Fischer learned about acoustics by developing software for Navy sonar and the telecommunications industry. Years later, a serendipitous brush with whale researchers in Baja California led him to take a closer look at whales and the diversity of their intricate underwater communication. "I don't think anyone has ever spent even a little time around a whale and not been amazed by it," Mr. Fischer said in an interview.

Mr. Fischer creates visual art from sound using wavelets. Once relatively obscure, wavelets are being used in applications as diverse as JPEG image compression, high definition television and earthquake research, said Gilbert Strang, a math professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert on wavelets.

They are popular now in part because they can capture intricate detail without losing the bigger picture, and when presented in circular form (using a cylindrical coordinate system), repeated patterns are even more evident. By stringing successive images together, Mr. Fischer transforms still images into animated audio files that bring the sound to life.

Among whales, certain sounds and patterns are unique to different species, and even individuals in a group - something like an auditory fingerprint, Mr. Fischer said. "To anyone who doesn't listen to it on a regular basis it sounds like a bunch of clicks," he said. "But if you're a whale - or someone who studies whales - it becomes clear that they have their own dialects."

Wavelets are capable of picking up those distinctions, Mr. Fischer said, nuances that may be missed by the human ear or less detailed visualization methods. "You can pick out any one of those movies and I'll tell you what it is without hearing a thing," he said. "The differences are that dramatic." He envisions a day when researchers may be able to use images generated using wavelets to identify and track individual whales.

Peter Tyack agrees that the technique has potential not only as art, but as a scientific research tool. A senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Dr. Tyack studies the way humpback whales communicate, trying to show that the repetitions in whale songs follow grammatical rules similar to those of human language.

"Looking at those figures, it looked like you could see a lot of repeated units," Dr. Tyack said of the images. "It looks like he's visualizing some of the points that we made in the paper about humpback song."

Despite having analyzed recordings from at least 16 species of whales, Mr. Fischer said he had just scratched the surface. "It's still a wide-open world out there," he said. "You think you're in the 21st century and we have the means to get anything, but when it concerns the deep ocean there is still quite a bit of mystery."

In the meantime, Mr. Fischer hopes that by merging science and art, he will inspire a greater appreciation of whales among both marine biologists and the public, as he gives many people a glimpse of a world they would otherwise never experience.

"It's a very rare opportunity to be in the water listening to a whale," he said. A picture, on the other hand, is something you can hang on your wall and look at every day.

"When you see what whales are doing with sound, or begin to see what they are capable of, it is clear that humans are not the only artists on the planet," he said.

By ANTHEE CARASSAVA Published: August 18, 2006 PIRAEUS, Greece, Aug. 17 — The United Nations Environment Program on Thursday pledged 50 million euros, about $64 million, to help clean up and contain a major Mediterranean oil spill caused by the conflict in Lebanon. The 87-mile-long slick, described by experts as the worst environmental disaster in Lebanese history, stained Lebanon’s shores after Israeli warplanes bombed an oil storage depot at Jiyeh, about 19 miles south of Beirut, on July 13 and 15. The continuing hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah barred marine experts from inspecting the most severely affected areas. But the cease-fire that took effect on Monday cleared the way for the start of an international effort to clean up and contain the spill, said United Nations, European and maritime officials who met here about the situation. “Now that the bombs have stopped and the guns have silenced,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, “we have a chance to rapidly assess the true magnitude of the problem and finally mobilize the support for an oil cleanup and restoration of the coastline.” Up to 15,000 tons of heavy fuel poured into the Mediterranean after the Jiyeh bombings, also polluting the Syrian coast and threatening other countries. The spillage could total 35,000 tons, close to the 1989 spill from the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in Alaska, officials said on the sidelines of the meeting here, in Greece’s biggest port. The participants included Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for the environment, and representatives from Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. “The treatment of this spill, the re-establishment of the ecosystem will take years,” said the Lebanese environment minister, Yacoub Sarraf. Lebanon began cleaning up the black sludge on Wednesday, sending vacuum trucks and pumps to clean tar balls that have settled on Beirut’s sandy coast. Despite the cease-fire, officials said, a continuing Israeli sea and air blockade hampered the arrival of equipment. Environmentalists say that endangered Mediterranean wildlife, like the green turtle, whose eggs hatch on Lebanese and Syrian beaches in July, faces an imminent threat. They say the spill — a cocktail of highly toxic substances — could damage tourism, rob fishermen of their livelihood and endanger human health, with a heightened risk of cancer because the fuel that spilled contained carcinogens like benzene. Under the four-page United Nations-sponsored plan completed Thursday, a number of Mediterranean countries will contribute personnel, training and equipment for the cleanup. Kuwait and Norway have already sent chemicals and equipment to clean up the oil, while OPEC has promised $200,000 for the effort, which also includes aerial surveys to assess the extent of the spill.

With the U.S. Senate heading for a showdown vote on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I wish I could sit down with you and other supporters to explain the enormous challenge we face over the next six weeks. Since I can't do that, I've done the next best thing and recorded a short video message about the critical situation at hand. I hope you'll watch this two- minute video right away. Then I need you to take an extra step to save the Arctic Refuge by passing this video on to your friends and colleagues. They need to know that drilling the Arctic -- and destroying our natural heritage -- will not save us money at the pump or make us more secure. Our goal: to reach into homes across America over the next two weeks, so that when the make-or-break vote comes after Labor Day, we can spring into action one million strong and defeat Big Oil's agenda. Click here to view the video and pass it on to others: http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/tellafriend.asp We've got no time to lose. The House recently passed the so-called "American-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act" (H.R. 5429), which would stuff the oil companies' already bloated coffers with billions more in profits. And it would destroy the Arctic Refuge for the sake of oil that won't make a dent in gas prices or wean us off Persian Gulf oil. A version of this Arctic wildlife destruction bill is now headed for a vote in the U.S. Senate sometime in September. Please help us mobilize one million Americans to stop this bill in its tracks. http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/tellafriend.asp I know how many times you've helped us block President Bush's relentless drive to destroy the Arctic Refuge. But the political reality is this: the White House can afford to lose this fight repeatedly. But we cannot afford to lose once -- or else the greatest living reminder of our natural heritage will die forever. Please help us prevent this disaster from coming to pass by helping us build a nationwide army of opposition. http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/tellafriend.asp And thank you for fighting to keep the Arctic wild and free. Sincerely, Robert Redford NRDC Action Fund