Killer Whales - Tumblr Posts
“Calls” 2015 Mixed media This was done as an exploration of representing the vastly different ways in which killer whale ecotypes in the eastern north pacific use sound. Their complex and mysterious languages sound very different between cultures, even to the untrained ear. I wanted to visually represent how the southern resident killer whales can fill the underwater world with sound, continuous bands of calls that ring through the waterways and bounce off nearby islands, illuminating the dark with their voices. Biggs’ killer whales on the other hand use their calls sparingly, probably to avoid being detected by their marine mammal prey. When they do call to one another, the sounds are clear, crisp, and decisive, not allowing themselves to belt out the cacophony of sound that resident killer whales sometimes do. That being said, there are times when Bigg’s killer whales call very loudly and rapidly to one another, particularly when they are in multi-family groups socializing. This is a generalization of their call types, ideally these images would be viewed with audio recording layered overtop, projected on a large screen. I have created a youtube version here: https://youtu.be/UX9Ir3jUXj4 And as in all my killer whale related works, I have depicted each whale as accurately as I can. The first image is of the K14 matriline (K14 “Lea”, K36 “Yoda”, K26 “Lobo”, and K42 “Kelp”), and the bottom is T20 “Kwatsi” and T21 “Pandora”.
Tha fig cookie !
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