A new project from professors at Michigan State University and the Ohio State University aims to map religious diversity in the Midwest. Students and faculty will collaborate to record the sounds of spiritually significant events. Michigan State University Associate Professor Amy DeRogatis says the project is using audio to illustrate diversity, because it can indicate more than other forms of data.

 

“A lot of times new religious groups don’t have their own buildings, they use all kinds of different spaces, and that, by paying attention to sound, we can, I think, hear a lot of things that might not be visible on the landscape, but might be present.”

 

DeRogatis says teams of students will collect and map the audio recordings. She says, initially, the project will only include sounds from Michigan and Ohio, but she hopes other Midwestern institutions will add recordings to it as well.

 

You can listen to the segment here.