New northern Ontario art installation lets visitors call a local river or lake

Jonathan Migneault · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 17, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

Visitors to the New Adventures successful Sound Art (NAISA) assemblage successful the bluish Ontario colony of South River volition soon get to springiness adjacent lakes and rivers a call.

Sound creator Eric Powell has a caller installation called Voice of the Water that connects a rotary telephone from the 1970s to recordings of waterways from the region.

"When you travel into NAISA , you'll beryllium capable to assistance the receiver and, and dial a fig that corresponds to 9 antithetic signaling locations," Powell said.

"You'll beryllium capable to benignant of dive into these underwater oregon adjacent these blended sounds underwater and supra h2o sounds from whichever peculiar determination you had selected."

A radical of section volunteers with NAISA recorded sounds from the assorted rivers and lakes utilizing accepted audio recorders and devices called hydrophones. 

A hydrophone is placed underwater to observe and grounds dependable from each directions. Powell said whale opus recordings, for example, are captured with hydrophones.

Darren Copeland is NAISA's creator manager and led the squad of volunteers that recorded audio from the 9 waterways.

He said moving with hydrophones runs antagonistic to champion practices for dependable recording, due to the fact that upwind and rainfall tin beryllium beneficial.

"The much rain, the amended due to the fact that the dependable connected the aboveground of the h2o hitting it, it becomes similar a drum," Copeland said.

Powell mixed the recordings taken astatine the surface, and underwater audio from the hydrophones, to get astatine the finished product. 

For past projects, helium recorded his ain dependable and Powell said it's fixed him a caller position to edit enactment different radical recorded.

"I get to perceive to them successful the aforesaid mode that my assemblage does, benignant of with caller ears," helium said.

Powell said helium wanted visitors to link to the sounds with a rotary telephone due to the fact that there's an intimacy that comes from utilizing a phone.

"We are connecting ourselves intimately, similar connected a one-on-one ground with idiosyncratic oregon thing that's acold away," helium said.

"So we're capable to usage this quality to task ourselves done the telephone."

The Voice of the Water installation starts connected July 18.