Seashore Digital Diaries, a fall semester course taught by visiting filmmaker and Coastal Studies Scholar David Conover ’83, P’17 and cross-listed in three departments — visual arts, environmental studies, and cinema studies —  used video production as a tool of inquiry at the seashore. We kick off a weekly series featuring a selection of the videos produced with “Seashell Headsphones,” with description and commentary provided by Conover:

Alex Sutula ’13 offers a very creative riff on a simple question we explored in class, “what do we really hear inside a sea shell?” An amplification of the world around us? The pumping blood within our ear canals? Or perhaps something of the ocean itself? Donning a wondrous pair of headphones made from two seashells, Alex listens to and reflects upon a range of class experiences, as well as his own shooting. I love it! He draws upon his boat-to-boat camerawork of our trip to the Schooner Bowdoin in Castine, as well as the POV wearable camera phenomenon of the marvelous GoPro, high in the schooner’s rigging. In pace with his own performance of an original guitar track, Alex’s camera also captures the graceful movements of Auburn Gonzales ’15 dancing on the sands of Popham, and the contemplations of Nick Benfey ’15 and others at the digital frontier, learning how to light and film aquaria in the Coastal Studies Center Marine Lab. Narration is provided by Stephen Kelley ’17. We are left amazed by all that can be heard within a shell.