Immerse yourself in a bioacoustic sound bath with Tom Mustill’s ‘How To Be A Whale’, a listening journey using d&b audiotechnik’s Soundscape system. Experience many hundreds of scientific recordings woven together into a story told through the lives of seven different whales and dolphins.

As part of Sam Lee’s Meeting is a Pleasant Place curation, this special sound bath is a celebration of a world that most people have never heard – the sounds of the sea. It’s made by writer and wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill and his friend and Whale DJ Vahakn Matossian with support from the charity WDC (Whale and Dolphin Conservation).

Tom has spent eight years exploring recordings from the sea for his book How To Speak Whale, which is about listening to animals. This sound bath brings the best and most unusual marine recordings together with recent discoveries about their lives to imagine what it might be like to be a humpback whale, orca, spotted dolphin, blue whale, bowhead whale, pilot whale and baby sperm whale, and their lives among fishes, coral, crabs, sea urchins and seals, from the tropics to the poles to the deep sea.

These events will last approximately 1 hour, without an interval.

Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

About Tom Mustill:

Tom Mustill is a biologist turned filmmaker and writer, specialising in stories where people and nature meet.  His first book How To Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication has won several awards and was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022. His film collaborations, many with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, have won two Webbys, a BAFTA, and an Emmy nomination, gone viral, been played at the UN, in Times Square, and on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. He lives in Cornwall with his wife and two daughters and is an ambassador for Whale and Dolphin Conservation.

About Vahakn Matossian:

Vahakn Matossian is an Armenian-German-Cypriot music specialist, composer, producer, electro-acoustic performer and inventor from London. He is one half of the ultra-experimental electro-acoustic duo SONNEN, with sought after classical and contemporary violist Max Baillie. He is an innovative instrument builder and product designer at Human Instruments, focusing on accessible musical instruments for players with physical disabilities, collaborating with the likes of MIT, Rhizomatiks, BFI, Yamaha, the British Council, and British ParaOrchestra.