Ben Mirin

Scientist | Artist | Educator | Storyteller

Ben Mirin is a musician, explorer, and science communicator who records wildlife and makes music from the sounds of nature. He travels to ecosystems around the world to record endangered species and perform concerts that inspire conservation. Services include composition, performance, public speaking, writing, and hosting.

Beastbox

Ben worked on: concept development, music composition, grant writing, audio production, public impact campaigns and performances, curriculum teaching

Collaborators: Bird Academy, Macaulay Library, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University Hip Hop Collection, BrainPop

Created by Ben Mirin and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, BeastBox is the world’s first online game that lets you make your own music from the sounds of nature. Users of this free online game take sounds of animals Mirin and his colleagues have recorded around the world and transform them into loops, creating a wide variety of entertaining beats, breaks, and drops.

Players also learn about the animals and their habitats, unlocking “Beastmode” when they correctly match animals that live in the same ecosystems. Each bonus track is created from sounds recorded in six ecosystems, including the rainforests of Madagascar, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Sonoran desert.

Since its launch in 2018, BeastBox has been syndicated for global distribution on BrainPop. The game has now reached over 4,000,000 people.

using beastbox: a guide for teachers

Our team has collaborated with BrainPop and K-12 educators to produce a complete toolkit for educators to use this game in any setting.

You can watch the BeastBox trailer on the right, download this toolkit at the link below, or just dive right in and play the game. There’s no wrong way to do it!

Feel free to contact Ben or the Lab of Ornithology with any feedback, questions, or ideas for collaboration.

 

From Cornell

“BeastBox is a surprise mashup brought to you by scientists, musicians, designers, animators, and coders…It’s dedicated to the idea that we could all use a few minutes to appreciate our musical planet. When I first met Ben Mirin, I knew we could take his wildlife DJ concept to a new level—and BeastBox is what came out.” - Mya Thompson, leader of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bird Academy project

From Ben Mirin

“I’ve used my passions for music and nature to explore the world, recording wildlife sounds and sampling them to create music that inspires conservation. BeastBox is another way to share that joy and knowledge with others. I hope people who play the game will be inspired to take their own creative approaches to nature, because the future of the planet depends on the ingenuity of people who care.”