Frogs & Toads of North America

Frogs & Toads of North America is an edu-taining multimedia program from the Caldwell Institute of Herpetology, presented in High-Tadpolarity™ Surround Sound with a dazzling Amphibilux™ light display.

This project was developed in Fall 2025 at the Conservatory in the University of Virginia’s Contemplative Sciences Center, a cross-disciplinary 20.1-channel audiovisual listening room with environmental lighting. It emerged from collaborative experiments in multichannel sound spatialization and research into sonic perception, embodiment, and the experience of listening. Frogs & Toads of North America is a reinterpretation of 1960s educational field-recording LPs. The narration and soundscapes become increasingly surreal, moving through imagined species, impossible locations, deep time, and eventual cosmic collapse.