Alexis Lamb Presents at U-Michigan President Ono Inauguration Poster Session

Over the last decade, I have composed and performed many works that thematically engage with nature or attempt to re-orchestrate natural sounds into music, including recreating bird calls, rocks skipping over ice, and walking on crunchy ground after a forest fire. In addition to my composition and performance experiences, my scholarship has also engaged with composers such as John Cage, R. Murray Schaefer, and Pauline Oliveros, who wrote frequently on soundscapes (both natural and human-made) and our relation to them through music. All of this work, as well as additional field research conducted in 2022, has contributed to my dissertation, "Refugia," and the planning of the Refugia Festival, which is a festival advocating for environmental conservation and preservation through the sense of sound.

The question at the heart of my dissertation is how human music can interact with natural soundscapes; specifically how our music can coexist with, or be in…