Global Summit on Ocean Sciences Features Student Compositions

One of Jennifer Beauregard's highest priorities in teaching science to musicians to show its relevance not just to their daily lives but to their art—and to show how works of art can say something important about science, too. It’s why Beauregard, associate professor in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Department, was so excited to get a couple of her students involved with the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2022, the world’s premier annual gathering of ocean specialists.

This past fall, Beauregard had asked two film scoring students in her Environmental Science course, Micah Pilarca and Eric Clark, to compose something with the Ocean Sciences Meeting in mind. And what began as homework turned into a professional opportunity: After hearing their compositions, Beauregard asked Pilarca and Clark if those pieces could be used as scores for videos introducing two of the meeting’s plenary speakers, and she invited the students to join her in a workshop focusing on how music can be used to communicate science to a general audience.

While scoring to something from the natural world—in this case, the ocean—introduced challenges to both students, given that they’re used to writing to media, they embraced the chance for artistic growth. “It was challenging to express my feelings and ideas toward the oceans,” Clark said. “[But] in ways it was freeing from the crutch we can rely so heavily on.” For Pilarca, the opportunity is a concrete step toward reaching his professional goals. “A dream career of mine would involve blending my love for music and the environment, so this is very exciting for me,” he said.

To meet those challenges, the students drew on their own connections to and reflections about the ocean. In Clark’s composition, “Waves,” for instance, he ruminated on the wild moods of the sea. “When I think about the ocean, I hear a constant conflict between two sides of the same coin,” he said. "Although the harmony is exactly the same throughout both halves of the piece, you can clearly feel a change…. What was just a natural hazard can swiftly become something so calming, serene, and tranquil. It’s unpredictable. This fatal attraction is the beautiful dichotomy of the ocean.”

Pilarca's piece, “Home: Movement 1,” took a more personal route. “I thought a lot about the island where I'm from, Guam, when composing this,” he said. “I wanted to showcase the different textures that I think about when I picture the environment, such as the sun glistening over a calm ocean, the lush jungles, and the harmony between all the working parts of an ecosystem.”

“Eric’s and Micah’s pieces invoke patterns that are common in nature,” Beauregard said, “patterns that people will recognize from their own experiences with the oceans, the atmosphere, and the land.” Through the joining of science and music, she hopes that a wider audience will become more aware of the beauty of the natural world and the challenges it faces. “It is critical that scientists find new and innovative ways to reach the general public and to explain complex ideas that directly affect people’s lives. Music is one way to do that.”