A Whale of a Time – a Science/Art Festival
Between March 8th-10th, SUNY Geneseo will welcome a 65-foot inflatable sperm whale to the ISC Focal Point (next to College Green). This environmental art and action kinetic sculpture by the artist Billie Lynn will form the backdrop for a series of events, interactions, and performances that allow us to think about human (dis)connections with the ecosystems that help us survive and thrive. Join us to celebrate the ways art and science can combine to explore the relationship between climate change and the individual – our campus “Ideas That Matter” theme for 2025-2026 – and help us take action on behalf of the planet we share.
We’re looking for volunteers to help with the whale or to act as docents (guides to the whale and its presence – read more here). You can sign up here or just show up. No experience or knowledge required! Help is especially useful Monday 10am-12pm and Tuesday 9-11am.
Schedule – the Whale will be in the campus ballroom SUNDAY 12pm-8pm (ISC Focal point Monday and Tuesday)
Please stop by the whale at any point to take it in, engage with our docents, listen to soundscapes, converse with fellow humans, and complete your own Climate Action Venn Diagram using a template from Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s What if We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures, the campus Common Read for the year. Please keep checking back for added events and updated details. Read more about the project here.
The plan is to be outside at ISC Focal Point Monday 9th March and Tuesday 10th March.
A Whale of a Time: A Science/Art Festival is sponsored by the Office of the Provost/Ideas That Matter; the Office of Sponsored Research; the Genesee Valley Literary Forum; the School of Performing Arts; the Department of Biology; the Department of English & Creative Writing; and the National Science Foundation (IOS #2407551 to M.E. Gerringer). Thank you for your support! We gratefully acknowledge the many hands who have made this event possible, including vital support from Facilities Services, The Office of Scheduling, Events, and Conference Services, the E-Garden, the Duplicating Center, CIT, Dan DeZarn, Andrea Klein, Paige Wasilewski, Lee Sabo, Paige Loucks, Sarah Allam, Michael Crowley, and Casey Dapshi.
Attended any events? Please fill out our Arts Engagement survey!
Sunday March 8th – College Union Ballroom
Click through for today’s whale of the day!
12-2pm Expedition, drop-by, hands-on workshop with NY State Puppet Festival (College Union Ballroom)
We’re sailing together toward an unknown future. One filled with adventure, uncertainty, and the need for resilience in the face of climate change. But with this comes the anxieties we all carry about the unknown.
In this two-hour interactive workshop (stop by for as long or short as you want!) with puppeteers Josh Rice & Emma Wiseman, participants are invited to help build the good ship Expedition and to write down on piece of paper worries or burdens they carry about our unknown climate futures, in conversation with Billie Lynn’s whale sculpture installed on SUNY Geneseo’s campus.
Participants will craft that paper into tiny puppet boats and/or a tiny puppet sailor. These sailors will form the crew of the Expedition, and this fleet will bravely sail together, collectively toward the unknown, charting their own climate future – with their maiden voice planned for Silver Lake, NY during the biennial NY State Puppet Festival in Perry, June 2026.
1-2pm Generative Creative Writing Workshop – Dr. Jenna Lê (Bailey 101)
Open to all, this workshop offers a chance to learn from an acclaimed poet and doctor whose poems combine the scientific world and the artistic one, helping us realize they are one and the same world, not separable.
4-5pm Poetry Reading – Dr. Jenna Lê (College Union Ballroom)
Mathematician, physician, poet: Jenna Lê, the Minnesota-born daughter of Vietnamese refugees, writes poems steeped in science and its potential to help us connect with both our fellow humans and the natural worlds around us, often invisible to us. Whales, manatees, refugees, travelers, newborns: her poems resonate with the ways we might come to understand one another, if only we attend, tuning in to one another and to the non-human ecosystems that allow us our human lives, breaths and loves.
7pm Sunset Cello Performance: “From Within” – Esther Rogers Baker (College Union Ballroom)
An exhibit that becomes performance art at twilight, “From Within” by Esther Rogers Baker is a conversation between a beached sperm whale and the cellist it swallowed. As the whale comes alive with sound, hear and see an intimate conversation between art and action, cellist and whale; “From Within,” as if alive, as though dying.
8pm Southside Boys A Capella Performance – (College Union Ballroom)
Join one of Geneseo’s wonderful, long-standing singing groups to listen to a rousing rendition of “Mr. Blue Sky” and “Good Ol’ Acapella” as we close out the whale’s first day.
Monday March 9th – ISC Focal Point
Click through for today’s whale of the day!
11am-11.30am – Whale Rise – ISC Focal Point
Join cellist Esther Rogers Baker, marine biologist Mackenzie Gerringer, and poet Lytton Smith for the whale’s first outdoor rise. This morning’s gathering offers a chance for us to meet one another and create (or renew) community ties as we gain inspiration from the whale and one another. We’ll talk about what the whale is doing here and ways to be open to nature, science, art, conversation, and reflection while the whale is here.
12.30-1.15pm Playful Writing with WRIT 105-23 – Dr. Sharon Peck and students (ISC Focal Point)
Join writing students to explore play and writing, including how improvisation structures help us internalize and embody writing moves. Come to listen and to write!
1.45pm-2.30pm Whale Acoustics & Environmental Listening – Dr. Kristi Hannam (Bailey 102)
For many years the conventional wisdom of western science was that below the surface of the sea was silence. But whales were some of the first marine creatures to have their voices recorded and studied. Humpback whales were the first to be recorded by naval sonar engineers trying to identify enemy Soviet submarines off the coast of the continental U.S. Whale recordings, including “Songs of the Humpback Whale” (1972), the best selling environmental album in history, helped change public perception of whales and the need for ocean conservation.
While western science may not have recognized the voices of whales until the 1970s, indigenous people knew the whales’ songs. In the last 55 years we have learned many lessons from studies of whales and their voices, about their behavior, about our impacts on the ocean, and about what we can learn from listening more closely to the world around us.
2.30pm-3.20pm Climate Action Workshop – Dr. Scott Giorgis (Bailey 103)
Climate change can feel like an overwhelming, complex challenge with countless possible solutions. This workshop offers a message of hope: we can solve this problem, and we don’t need new technology to begin. Using an MIT‑developed model grounded in the best available science, participants will explore a range of potential solutions and the positive ways in which this could impact our future. Please bring your laptop.
4-5pm A Second Life: Whale Falls in the Deep Sea – Dr. Mackenzie Gerringer (Bailey 101)
Death is not the end of a whale’s story. After whales die, their bodies sink hundreds to thousands of feet to the deep seafloor below. There, they feed incredible specialized communities for years or even decades. Deep-sea organisms have evolved to rely on these whale falls to survive and are able to use even the most hard-to-digest parts of the whale. In this talk, we’ll explore the second life of the whale, discovering diversity and adaptation to this amazing habitat. Come meet the animal with the world’s best common name, the bone-eating snot flower!
Whale falls serve as one important reminder of how closely connected ocean ecosystems are. Life and the surface, and our choices, impact the deep sea, our planet’s largest habitat. We’ll end this session by enjoying some whale-fall inspired art as SciComm inspiration! All are welcome, bring your curiosity, bring your questions.
5-5.30pm Anatomy of a Wave: Sonified Music and Video – Glenn McClure (ISC Focal Point)
This chamber music work, composed by Geneseo alum and professor Glenn McClure, is based on the sonification of scientific data sets. The piece follows the pathway of a wave, from its initiating event to its journey to the shore and return to the sea. Since the core melodies emerge from sonified data from Antarctica and Lake Champlain, it illustrates the way in which our planetary water systems bind us together across cultures, nations, and religions. This piece was recently premiered at the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, NY by the chamber group Fivebyfive with graphics by Marc Webster. McClure’s last work, “Totality” was part of an album that debuted #2 on Billboard’s Traditional Classical Music chart. McClure will be present to talk about the work and lead a discussion on the intersection of Music and Science.
7pm Sunset Cello Performance: “From Within” – Esther Rogers Baker (ISC Focal Point; rain location: ISC Atrium)
An exhibit that becomes performance art at twilight, “From Within” by Esther Rogers Baker is a conversation between a beached sperm whale and the cellist it swallowed. As the whale comes alive with sound, hear and see an intimate conversation between art and action, cellist and whale; “From Within,” as if alive, as though dying.
Tuesday March 10th – ISC Focal Point
10.15am-10.30am Dance Performance (ISC Focal Point; rain location Erwin Hall lobby)
Watch a site-specific dance performance choreographed by student and faculty engagement with the whale. This dance was collaboratively built in two days, to reflect the dancer’s reactions to engaging with this unique site, its meanings, its shape, its movements, and its energy. Dance was inspired in collaboration with Billie Lynn’s kinetic sculpture.
10.30am-10.45am Geneseo Chamber Singers perform “The Seal” by Eric Whitacre (ISC Focal Point; rain location Erwin Hall lobby)
Come hear our wonderful Geneseo Chamber Singers perform this 21st century choral setting of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Seal Lullaby.”
11.30am-12pm Fiction Reading – Emrys Donaldson (ISC Focal Point; Rain Location Bailey 209)
Listen to Emrys Donaldson read his story “We are the 300-year-old big bois of the sea and we did not come to play,” from his forthcoming collection of stories The Iridescents
12pm-1pm A Whale of A Time Craft Hour (Bailey 209)
Join us for a festival craft hour! We’ll have supplies and patterns for making crochet whales for those who would like. All other projects and craft media are welcome, too. Let’s knit, draw, create, and connect! Hosted by Mariann George, Cynthia Klima, Jennifer Kenyon, Alexis Clifton, Suann Yang, and Mackenzie Gerringer
1pm-2pm Meet the Artist: Billie Lynn (Virtual/Welles 128)
Join Art History Professor Alla Myzelev and students in ARTH 487 to learn more not just about the whale installation but Lynn’s wider practice in kinetic and interactive sculpture and environmental art/activism. Lynn will appear virtually to discuss her work and answer audience questions. To join, please use this link.
2pm Forest Meditation – Chip Matthews – meet at ISC Focal Point (next to College Green)
Take a walk in the woods and reduce stress, improve attention, boost your immunity and lift your mood! Inspired by the Japanese practice of ‘forest bathing’ (Shinrin Yoku), Forest Therapy guide and Meditation Instructor Chip Matthews invites participants to breathe deep, slow down and see what inner peace you might find in the great outdoors – and learn that connecting with nature is a reciprocal practice.
3.30pm-4.30pm Panel: International Politics and Climate Change (Bailey 104)
This panel highlights the relevance of recent international political events and dynamics with respect to climate change.
- Karleen West, chair – “The US Invasion of Venezuela and Climate Change”
- Anand Rao – “US Interest in Greenland and Climate Change”
- Jeonghwa Yang – “Civil Society and Climate Change”
5pm-5.45pm Jazz Improv – (ISC Focal Point)
Listen as music students improvise in response to the whale’s presence and movements.
5.45pm Whale-inspired open improv – (ISC Focal Point)
A chance to join in with musicians and respond to the whale musically as we head towards its departure.
7pm Sunset Cello Performance: “From Within” – Esther Rogers Baker (ISC Focal Point; rain location: ISC Atrium)
An exhibit that becomes performance art at twilight, “From Within” by Esther Rogers Baker is a conversation between a beached sperm whale and the cellist it swallowed. As the whale comes alive with sound, hear and see an intimate conversation between art and action, cellist and whale; “From Within,” as if alive, as though dying.
8.00pm-8.45pm Moving with the Whale Dance Party – the community (ISC Focal Point)
Join us to celebrate the connections we’ve made with the whale, with nature, and with each other. We’ll watch the whale move for a final time and join in with it, dancing in the dusk before we watch it deflate (or is it submerge?) to travel on elsewhere. And we’ll take the energy of movement and momentum on with us: what changes can we make now as we, too, travel on?
Beyond the Whale – Where Do We Go From Here?
As we reflect on this week’s experiences, we are invited to look forward. What do we want to take from this festival experience and what we have learned? Is there an action, a goal, or an idea you feel inspired to take on? Click to view our resource sheet for ideas and inspiration!