52 Blue

This piece represents the sound signature of a whale, known as 52 Blue (or the 52-hertz whale). 52 Blue was first discovered in 1992 when scientists encountered his unique voice, which sings at 52-hertz, much lower than other whales. For many years, scientists kept track of this special whale, who was eventually dubbed “the loneliest whale” because it was thought that he couldn’t communicate with other whales becasue they couldn’t hear him and didn’t vocalize at that frequency. For this piece, I traced 52 Blue’s spectrogram and translated it into an embroidery pattern. 52 Blue, cotton thread, 6x21 inches, 2026.

Explore a longer essay about this piece on Medium.