Mark Ballora

Mark Ballora, a dear friend and collaborator, was a pioneer in acoustics and “sonification” of data. A memorial service is being held this weekend at Penn State, where he was a professor of music technology.

Naturally I collected my thoughts about carrying forward his energy and vision in musical form. This short composition (<2.5 min) incorporates a musical cipher of his name, coral reef sounds, and audio recordings he made of me pitched at his vocal frequency, as a symbol of my dedication to seeing his voice, missions, and work are carried forward.

Mark Ballora Echoes to Future.wav

Mark and I met at a National Academies Keck Futures Initiative conference and are in the middle of a NAKFI grant on sonifying ocean data: “Layers of Meaning: How the Ocean’s Natural Acoustics and the Music of its Datasets Can Reveal Hidden Connections”