Lei Liang / Joshua Jones: The Inaudible Ocean – Extended Program Notes

The Inaudible Ocean is a collaboration between composer Lei Liang and oceanographer Joshua Jones at the Lei Lab. It explores a vast spectrum of acoustic data, spanning signals from the infrasonic (as low as 10 Hz) to the ultrasonic (up to 160 kHz). For perspective, human music typically occupies a range from 20 Hz to 20 kHz—less than ten percent of the frequencies we study.

What renders these signals inaudible to humans? It is not only their frequency range, but also their temporal scale. To perceive the richness of certain echolocation signals, for instance, we must transpose their frequencies downward and slow playback by factors of ten or even one hundred. This process reveals the intricate acoustic “landscape” of the ocean, where valleys and mountains emerge through awe-inspiring cascades of echoes.

The Inaudible Ocean is a journey into realms beyond human hearing, where technology serves as our tool and curiosity as our compass. Together, scientists and artists create a “sonic searchlight” to illuminate hidden wonders of the sea.

As an auditory analogue to changing magnification and aperture in optics, the sonic searchlight transforms sonic data through the manipulation of time and frequency, revealing microscopic processes in sea ice formation or the reverberation of sound within the bodies of the animals that produce it.

The work is organized into seven “searchlights,” each corresponding to a distinct ratio of temporal expansion and frequency transposition. Each may be understood as a movement of the composition. Although each can be experienced independently, the premiere presented the complete work in the following sequence, with the marine mammals appearing in each section:

Searchlight I – original speed
Narwhal, sperm whale, dolphins, killer whale, narwhal (with hints of fin and blue whales at double speed)

Searchlight II – 0.5 speed
Tropical dolphin, Baird’s beaked whale, dolphin, tropical dolphin + Baird’s (duet)

Searchlight III – 0.25 speed
Tropical dolphin, Baird’s beaked whale, dolphin, trio of the preceding three

Searchlight IV – 0.1 speed
Arctic ice, Dall’s porpoise, Stejneger’s beaked whale + tropical dolphin (duet), dolphin + Baird’s (duet), Stejneger’s + tropical dolphin (duet)

Searchlight V – 0.05 speed
Artic ice, Baird’s beaked whale, Stejneger’s beaked whale, Stejneger’s + tropical dolphin (duet), quiet ice, Dall’s porpoise

Searchlight VI – 0.025 speed
Arctic ice, Baird’s beaked whale, Stejneger’s beaked whale, Stejneger’s + tropical dolphin (duet), quiet ice, Dall’s porpoise

Searchlight VII – 0.0125 speed
Dall’s porpoise, Arctic ice, Baird’s beaked whale, Stejneger’s beaked whale, Baird’s beaked whale, quiet ice + Dall’s porpoise (duet)

These seven searchlight movements are interspersed with a humpback whale song that functions as a recurring refrain, titled Long Song of the Sea. Captured by hydrophone at a site 1,300 meters deep, it documents a continuous fourteen-hour performance by a humpback whale passing through the Southern California Bight, the offshore island province. For millions of years, humpback whales have sung in dialogue with the ocean. Could this be the oldest song on Earth ever captured?

The Inaudible Ocean opens and closes with Sonar Cascades, the only sound in the composition derived from a human-made signal: sonar. The original signal, at 11 kHz, lies near the upper threshold of hearing for many listeners. Slowed to one hundred times its original duration, it fans outward while transposing downward by approximately six octaves. The title was inspired by a phrase in Roger Payne’s influential book Among Whales, in which he describes a “cascade of echoes” in the ocean.

The Inaudible Ocean was commissioned by the ProtoStar Group and premiered by Mark Dresser (contrabass), Cory Smythe (piano), Steven Schick and Camilo Zamudio-Romero (percussion) on May 20, 2026, in Conrad Prebys Concert Hall at the University of California, San Diego.

-       Lei Liang and Joshua Jones 

The Creative Team at Lei Lab:
Lei Liang – Composer / Artistic Director
Joshua Jones – Oceanographer / Principal Scientific Advisor
Charles Deluga – Audio Producer
Zachary Seldess – Audio Software Developer
Liam Kerslake – Post-Production Audio

Thanks to John Hildebrand and the Whale Acoustics Laboratory at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for providing bioacoustics data and technical support.

To learn more about the Lei Lab, click here.