Students study sound for art installation at Rosza Center

HOUGHTON — Fourth graders at Houghton Elementary have had an interesting lesson in art class this week: Michigan Tech Professor Chris Plummer has been visiting the school all week and teaching the students about the study of sound.

As part of his training program, students learned how to analyze sound in a spectrum form and also learned more about how sound affects our imagination. While listening to sounds of nature, students were asked to draw a picture of the images that came to mind.

“Today we were working with the kids to expose them to the sounds capes that we’ve recorded to open their minds to listening more carefully to the environment around them and having them do some artistic exploration with that and react emotionally and visually to the oral influences that we sort of expose them to today. Their artwork will be part of our installation at the Rosza Center,” said Plummer.

The children’s artwork will be on display from December 2nd through January 26th. All of the recordings used were obtained from local parks as part of the “Listening to the Parks” project, a program that is funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by the National Park Service.