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“Visual signaling is any method of above water communication, the transmission of which is capable of being seen (alphabet flags, semaphore flags, Morse flashing light). Sound signaling is any method of sending Morse signals by means of siren, whistle, foghorn, bell or other sound apparatus.” Hannah Weiner; Code Poems in Open House. see ECLIPSE ARCHIVE

Within earshot of each other, outside of each other's viewshed, on opposite sides of the same big thing, like the Mississippi River, two groups of people situate themselves across from one another and communicate in sounds.

Bring sound tools, cones, noise making objects, listening apparatus, a bull-horn that beeps. Try non-lexical sounds, sounds of extinct species, cardinal and grizzly sounds in St Louis. Include other sound species including humans that may respond inside your sound volumes. Cup hands to ears when listening; cup hands to mouth when sounding. On the mouth of the river, an everyday piece of letter-size paper can be carefully twisted into a cone and held to your mouth as a simple megaphone, and held to your ears as “ear glasses”.

Practice taking-turns and listening to each other. Note the time sound takes to travel across shifting river acoustic atmospheres. Note how the cloud cover affects your voice. Set multiple locations along the river to understand how local conditions affect sound crossing experience. Draw maps of the sound action in your field books to locate, notate, and annotate your sound crossing. Repeat the sound action wherever you are and when you need to communicate across a big thing, with some sense of ritual.