The Pond was conceived and produced at the Mountain Lake Biological Station, Pembroke, VA by “The Sensing Lab”: a collaborative team of artists Meredith Leich, Stephen Vitiello, and Ash Eliza Williams. As artists-in-residence at the Biological Station in 2023, we found an affinity in each other’s work and sensibilities. We formed “The Sensing Lab” to return the following year to explore, alongside the station’s biologists, the lives of animals, plants, and humans through sensory investigations: deep listening, underwater recording, embodied performing. Ranging from perceptual to technological, our non-scientific observations included attempts to inhabit the worlds of other beings, while acknowledging our sensory limitations as humans. 

The Pond was recorded at night, in and around Riopel Pond - an iconic centerpiece of the field station. The location is rich with frogs with distinctive voices, from the low bullfrogs to the very high pitched spring peepers. On several occasions, we saw mysterious lights at night moving along the perimeter of the pond. Later, we learned these were scientists looking for frogs, which they tag and study. Drawn in by the evocative scene, we set up camp at the water’s edge for four nights to sense the pond’s activities and sounds, both human and animal, beneath the stars. The emerging project is a quiet witness to and performance of the slow process of gathering scientific knowledge. It is also a record of our attempts to experience the inscrutable sensory world of a frog: a biodiverse habitat which is becoming ever more rare.