Mark Fischer

False Killer Whale (Pseudorca crassidens) : digital image : Mark Fischer : 2008

White Beaked Dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) : digital image : Mark Fischer : 2008

North Pacific Minke Whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) : digital image : Mark Fischer : 2008

Artist and whale researcher Mark Fischer captures the sounds of marine mammals using a special process he invented, turning them into rippling hypnotic images he refers to as "wavelets". Fischer endeavors to map the cetacean language, looking for underlying patterns --- simultaneously producing aesthetic patterns that he relates to rainbows in their unplumbable beauty.

I have included several images that the artist created from the recorded sounds of the North Pacific Minke Whale, the Atlantic Spotted Dolphin, the False Killer Whale, and the White Beaked Dolphin --- though he has created hundreds of "wavelets, " based on different recordings of undersea mammals vocalizing.

According to Fischer:

"A sound as loud as a Blue whale makes can span half the world's oceans, which means two whales could [theoretically] send a signal around the globe in just over seven hours"

Fischer's works reminds us of how little we know or understand of the world of our fellow intelligent mammals. His lacy images provide an enticing, if mediated, glimpse at a world generally out of our reach and beyond our ken (at least for now...).

Atlantic Spotted Dolphin (Stenella frontalis) : digital image : Mark Fischer : 2008