LIT FROM WITHIN – GIN STONE

Lit from Within transforms firefly blink patterns into sound using custom software that reads each flash as a musical event. The accompanying video renders the fireflies as luminous, jellyfish-like forms blinking against a deep blue ground, connecting two of nature’s bioluminescent languages across land and sea. The result is an immersive twelve-minute work in which light, biology, and music merge into a single living system.

Photosensitivity Warning: This video contains the flashing of fireflies and visual effects that may trigger seizures in individuals with photosensitive epilepsy.

Lit from Within is part of Field Notes: A Requiem, an ongoing series that sonifies scientific and environmental data drawn from disappearing natural systems. Each work transforms data into immersive listening and viewing experiences, creating a record of what exists – and what is fading.

A 15 minute video and sound work that begins with a simple observation: fireflies communicate through light. Each flash carries information; species, timing, duration, and intensity that form a biological language spoken in darkness. This work listens to that language and translates it into sound.

The signals are mapped onto the Gong scale, the ancient Chinese pentatonic tuning built on the intervals C, D, E, G, and A. The absence of semitones and dissonance in this scale mirrors the quality of the firefly’s own communication: spare, intentional, and clear. Five channels are assigned to separate instrumental voices that identify the species.

The visual component deepens the work’s inquiry into bioluminescence as a shared biological phenomenon. Through digital augmentation, the firefly footage is transformed into something aquatic – the insects rendered as soft, pulsing forms against a deep blue ground, their lights blooming like jellyfish in a darkened tank. The effect is a deliberate one, as fireflies and jellyfish share no evolutionary lineage, yet both have independently arrived at light as a means of expression. The visual translation asks the viewer to hold both creatures in mind at once- one vanishing, one flourishing- and to sit with what that asymmetry reveals about the natural world we have shaped.

Born in New York in 1971, Gin Stone is an interdisciplinary artist exploring environmental decline, animal advocacy, and the impermanence of life. Working with salvaged linen, reclaimed textiles, and found materials, she creates installations involving projection and sound, mixed-media constructions and pen and ink drawing on odd objects that reflect ecological fragility and acts of repair. Stone’s work has been exhibited in New York City, Santa Monica, Atlanta, Boston and Provincetown and is held in the permanent collection of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Her practice has been supported by the Mass Cultural Council, the Puffin Foundation, and residencies including Twenty Summers and Peaked Hill Trust, integrating fieldwork, sustainability, and historic/mythical inquiry into material form.

Field Notes:
Date: June 15, 2026
Time: 21:33:33:00 Duration: 11 minutes and 43 seconds
Weather: 62° partly cloudy, 79% humidity
Moon phase: New Moon
Location: Latitude 41° 42’ 37” N Longitude 70° 0’ 34” W
Elevation: 30’/9m above sea level, facing a decline to the south-southwest

Original video shot on an iPhone: video capture
Black Magic Software Settings Shutter: 1/30 Frame Rate: 30
Black Magic allows for larger control of iPhone image capture.
Premiere: First round of alteration was to contrast, saved out and midi rendered.
Saved video from that became basis for the following:
Changed settings to increase the contrast, tint, saturation, temp and opacity as layers of video on top of each other. Blurs and glows. Original blue with low opacity over final video with effects. Premiere is Adobe’s film editing and finishing software.
MATLAB: Script movement triggered by flashes, rendered into a track for each species. MATLAB, the language of engineers and scientists, is a programming and numeric computation environment for algorithm development, data analysis, and visualization.
Reaper: A virtual instrument was set and plays back the notes derived from the data. All sound work and production are completed in this program. Reaper is a complete digital audio production application for computers, offering a full multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing and mastering toolset.

Within each species track, individual notes are assigned from the five pitches of the Gong pentatonic scale (C, D, E, G, and A) using a random selection process. Each time a flash is detected and routed to a species track, the software selects one of the five scale degrees at random for that note. This means no two consecutive flashes are predetermined to land on the same pitch, and no melodic pattern is imposed by the software.

The result is that the rhythm and timing of every note is entirely determined by the fireflies; the software records exactly when each flash occurs and places a note at that precise moment. The pitch of each note is chosen randomly from within the five available tones of that track’s octave register. Because all five pitches belong to the same pentatonic scale, any combination that occurs will always be harmonically consonant; therefore, the scale has no semitones or dissonant intervals, so random selection within it always produces something that sounds intentional and coherent.

In practical terms this means the fireflies compose the rhythm and the scale provides the harmonic framework, while the specific melody that emerges is a product of chance operating within those constraints, not unlike how natural systems themselves work, where individual behavior is unpredictable but collective patterns follow biological rules.

The instruments assigned to each species’ track are fully determined as the following:

Species identification results and assigned instrument:

Big Dipper (P. pyralis): Toy Glockenshpiel
8 flashes

Femme Fatale (Photuris sp.): Toy Glockenshpiel (higher pitch)
7 flashes

Synchronous (P. carolinus):
462 flashes

Macdermotti (P. macdermotti): Egg
37 flashes

Blue Ghost (P. reticulata): Mandolin

1981 flashes

Total flashes routed: 2495

Since the Femme Fatale mimics other fireflies in hopes of luring them into becoming dinner, the flash instrument is assigned the same as the Big Dipper that she is mimicking, but in a hollow slightly off note which occurs right after the Big Dipper flash.

Ambient sound for credits:
Spring trig and spring field cricket, eastern coyote, easter screech owl

Data given to MATLAB for analysis decisions

Big Dipper Firefly (Photinus pyralis)

Male Pattern: Emits a single, sustained greenish-yellow flash (about 0.5 seconds) while flying in a lazy, upward-dipping “J” shape.

Female Response: Waits exactly 2 seconds, then emits a single short flash.

Habit: Highly active at dusk, often found hovering over lawns and open meadows.

Synchronous Firefly (Photinus carolinus)

Male Pattern: A series of 5 to 8 rapid greenish-yellow flashes, followed by a total blackout of 8 to 10 seconds. The whole swarm flashes in unison.

Female Response: Waits about 2 seconds, then gives a steady double-flash.

Habit: Native to river valleys in mature, high-elevation hardwood forests (best known

Macdermotti Firefly (Photinus macdermotti)

Male Pattern: Emits a pair (double) of quick flashes spaced about 2 seconds apart. The pair is then repeated after roughly 4 seconds of darkness.

Female Response: Sits in low vegetation and replies with a single flash exactly 1.2 seconds after the second male flash.

Habit: Prefers edges of woodlands and grassy fields, displaying early in the evening.),

Blue Ghost Firefly (Phausis reticulata)

Male Pattern: They do not blink; instead, males emit a continuous, sustained pale-blue or green “glow” while flying slowly above the forest floor.

Female Response: Females are usually wingless and glow continuously from the leaf litter or moss.

Femme Fatale Firefly (Photuris species)

Male Pattern: A series of single white or bright-green flashes similar to a flashbulb, usually repeating every few seconds.

Female Response: They are infamous mimics. Females will listen to and copy the flash patterns of other species (like Photinus) to lure in unsuspecting males of those species, only to eat them.

Each species track operates in its own octave register, so the five tracks are always tonally distinct from one another regardless of which pitches are selected within them.