Kani ka ʻōpala

Second on our tour is a deeper dive into the trail of tin. How is it sourced? How does it get all the way here? And what happens to these empty containers once they’ve served their purpose (delivering content)? Aluminum cans are 100% and infinitely recyclable: we could theoretically keep melting and reshaping them with no loss of structure or volume. We technically don’t need to keep disposing of them and re-sourcing the same materials over and over again. But recycling, while possible, maybe isn’t always as convenient as using them once and throwing them “away.” This section includes a visual verse + song performed on instruments made from tin cans, as well as a cheeky children’s booklet.

Have you seen the rains bring the mountain to the shore? This installment celebrates the sea. Water is an extremely powerful force in nature, breaking apart mountains and moving their remains all across the globe. In seeking to create musical instruments from all categories, the ocean provides us with glass (melted down quartz and feldspar grains). Glass vibrates as a solid, and filling a glass container with water adds mass, slowing down the rate of vibration (which we interpret as a drop in pitch).

This station is meant to be interactive: by scanning the QR code and positioning yourself in front of the glass-o-phone, you can play along with the song:

The sea is also, unfortunately, the ultimate downstream repository of much of our waste (predominantly plastics). To highlight this, I partnered first with students at Ala Wai Elementary (under the direction of art instructor Stacey Stewart) to create a kelp forest made from decorated plastic bottles. These students were asked to interpret the voyaging-inspired lyrics of the song above and represent it visually by painting the bottles:

When the planet swims across the blue,
See how the red light glows, Mele?
What does the red light know?
When the stars are cared for by the moon,
Feel how the current flows, Mele?
Feel the current flow.
We know a place, we’re finding our way.

From the koʻolau the warm breeze blows,
Through the sails tonight, Mele,
Fills the sails tonight.
When the hoʻolua brings the cold,
From the storms tonight, Mele,
From the north tonight.
We know our place, we’re finding our way.

Now the waves lead to the deep lagoon,
What does the porpoise know, Mele?
What does the porpoise know?
See, the sharks say hi to the great canoe?
What will tomorrow hold, Mele?
What does tomorrow hold?
We know that place. We’re making our way.

Morning skies are gilded by the birds,
What does the white tern know, Mele?
What does the white tern know?
When the guiding light and flight confirms,
See where the white tern goes, Mele?
Follow the white tern home.
We know this place. We‘re finding our way.

I also partnered with the Marine Debris Research Center of Hawaiʻi Pacific University to use a few items collected from their debris reclamation projects:

These instruments were then used for a rendition of Hawaiʻi Aloha:

Who doesn’t love trees? They provide shade, oxygen, paper, cardboard, habitat, and more. This section draws our attention to trees with a poem as well as a multi-track recording, “Cardboard Morning,” that uses only instruments made of cardboard and gradually overlays 30 tracks of audio to give a sense of the forest coming to life as the sun rises:

I also worked with Voyager Public Charter School (under the direction of arts instructor Jill Sotelo) to have students engage with cardboard by visually representing their impressions of the song.

If you want to vote for your favorite image (student winner gets a prize! voting ends November 1, 2025), or if you just want an up close look at these individual contributions, please click below:

Yes, animals! The term “fossil fuels” popularly and inaccurately conjures up visions of plastic’s origins as being the dinosaurs, but actually it comes from the masses of Mesozoic zooplankton that, over millions of years, has decayed and been compressed into crude oil deposits. Plastic polymers are produced in the process of refining this extracted crude oil. As long as we are extracting, refining, and burning fossil fuels, we’re stuck with an overabundance of plastic.

I find plastic packaging to be useful for instrument building in many ways: its flexibility makes it useful as a reed, its stretchy shrink-ability makes for great drum and banjo membranes, its readily available tubular shape (pipes) makes wind instrument construction a breeze (pun!), and in its nylon form (fishing line) it makes for affordable strings for guitars and ukulele.

As an example, here’s a song showcasing a tambourine made by stapling flattened egg crate plastic to a wooden frame:

To highlight these features and the material for this exhibit, I’ve constructed 4 types of wind instrument (single reed, double reed, flute, and membrane oboe), combined as an ensemble to play a well-known Sibelius tune, Finlandia.