A Whale of a Time – a Science/Art Festival
Between March 8th-10th, şÚÁĎÍř 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.
To suggest an event, contact the organizers: Esther Rogers Baker (Music), Mackenzie Gerringer (Biology), and Lytton Smith (English & Creative Writing)
We’re looking for docents – volunteers to act as guides to the whale and its presence. Read more and sign up . No experience or knowledge required!
Schedule
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 using a template from Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s , the campus Common Read for the year. Please keep checking back for added events and updated details!
The rain location for the whale is the Campus Ballroom on Sunday 8th and Monday 9th March. In the event of inclement weather, events will take place even if we cannot inflate the whale – see this website for updated rain locations.
Sunday March 8th
10am-10.30am – Whale Rise – ISC Focal Point
Join artist Billie Lynn and cellist Esther Rogers Baker to mark the arrival of the whale to our campus. 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 hear about and share ways to be open to nature, conversation, and reflection over the coming days and we’ll find ways to move with and in response to the whale – whether by journalling, sketching, yoga, or other kinetic reactions to our campus visitor.
12-2pm Expedition, drop in hands-on workshop with NY State Puppet Festival (ISC Focal Point; rain location: ISC Atrium)
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 şÚÁĎÍř’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 Writing Workshop – Dr. Jenna LĂŞ (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 LĂŞ (ISC Focal Point; rain location: ISC Atrium)
Mathematician, physician, poet: Jenna LĂŞ, 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 (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.
8pm Southside Boys A Capella Performance – (ISC Focal Point; rain location: ISC Atrium)
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
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.
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.
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
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
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 (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 discuss her work and answer audience questions
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”
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.
8pm-8.30pm 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?