Annie Lewandowski is a composer, performer, and senior lecturer in the Department of Music at Cornell University. In 2017, she began studying the changing songs of humpback whales with pioneering bioacoustician, Katy Payne. Annie’s 2018 composition, Cetus: Life After Life, for humpback whale song and chimes, traces the evolution of Hawaiian humpback song from 1977-1981. Her current project, Siren – Listening to Another Species on Earth, explores the meeting of multiple intelligences – human, humpback whale, and artificial – in an immersive audio-visual installation created in collaboration with artist and coder Kyle McDonald and scenic designer Amy Rubin. Siren was previewed on Martha’s Vineyard in August 2021, and at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University during the Whale Listening Project in September 2021. Siren will have its official premiere during the Media Art Xploration festival the Neuroverse in New York City, November 5-7, 2021. https://mediaartexploration.org/program/siren/
Annie has performed at festivals and venues across the United States and Europe, including the Casa da Música (Porto, Portugal), the Hippodrome (London), Musica Nelle Valli (San Martino Spino, Italy), the Great American Music Hall (San Francisco), the Frieze Arts Fair (London), Avalon (Los Angeles), and REDCAT (Los Angeles). She is a 2014 Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow, and has been awarded grants from the Cornell Council for the Arts and the Atkinson Center for Sustainability. In 2019, she contributed to the creation of Pattern Radio: Whale Songs, Google Creative Lab’s webtool for teaching AI to recognize patterns in humpback whale song.
