In 2024–2025, I have been awarded a Fellowship by the Institute of Advanced Research at the University of Surrey, Guildford. I was an artist in residency there, regularly collaborating with my Surrey host: Dr Marine Petit, School of Biosciences.
Together we have been focusing on developing a sonification model and a creative piece of music that captures the hidden impact of global warming on the UK tick species Ixodes ricinus.
Understanding the dynamics and population shifts of ticks is essential for designing effective control strategies. This Fellowship explores those dynamics through an unconventional lens, combining mathematical modelling with field recordings to compose a musical sentence that represents the ideal lifecycle of a tick. This sentence can then be altered by adjusting environmental parameters, producing the first sonic interpretation of how climate change may affect tick populations. In doing so, the work aims to offer an artistic yet data-informed model that could, in time, help us grasp local and global fluctuations in tick ecology.
https://www.ias.surrey.ac.uk/fellows/boris-allenou/
Boris Allenou 