Presentation at Aix-Marseille University - October 15, 2025

For a second time after one year, today I presented the latest updates of the Sensing the Forest project at the Master’s degree in Acoustics and Musicology from Aix-Marseille University. The first presentation was scheduled on October 23, 2024. It was reported in our blog here.

The students are in their 1st year of a 2-year Master’s, and from two streams, 13 from the engineering stream and 9 from the musicology & humanities stream.

Similar to last year, the session consisted of two parts. In the first part, I presented the project in the format of a research seminar. In the second part, we continued with an interview/discussion to provide students with a comprehensive and practical understanding of an academic career that involves both research and lecturing.

About the talk

The outline of the talk included talking about the project. Then, I presented work packages 1 and 2: Artistic audio ecology intervention concerning forests and climate data; and Community science intervention with forests and climate data, respectively. Finally, I shared some reflections and future work.

Q&A

The students had several questions throughout the talk. Some of the questions were practical, such as what microphones have we used in the streamers, who pays for this type of project, and how does a project like this co-exist with your academic and personal life. This led to a discussion of the role of the funding body and research projects in academia. Another question was about the metrics from the funder: how do they know that it went well? How is it measured? This brought the discussion to making sure to deliver the planning presented in the accepted proposal. Other questions related to the more-than-human perspective of whether Pete’s installation has had a positive impact on animals, a valid point with no easy answer that is worth considering in the future. It was also asked what the sound was like in the breathing representing CO2 intake in Pete’s installation.

Research careers

For the second part of the session, Mathieu asked questions about the job role and activities related to teaching and doing research, and how to combine it with artistic practice. Another set of questions related to skills and preparation to be a lecturer and researcher.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Mathieu Barthet for the invitation and to the students of the Master’s in Acoustics and Musicology, Aix-Marseille University, for their inspiring questions.