Welcome

(Credit: Andre Daugherty, 2025)

Hello! My name is Dr. Mason Youngblood. I'm a behavioral scientist, sound artist, and builder working at the edge of cultural evolution, animal communication, and public imagination. I'm the founder and Executive Director of the Animal Culture Observatory, and I cofounded the Collective Creativity Lab at Stony Brook University.

My research uses computational methods like machine learning and agent-based modeling to reveal the structural complexity and cultural richness of bird and whale song, and to explore how human music and behavior change over time and space. This work has appeared in journals including Science, Science Advances, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and has been covered by outlets including the New York Times, National Geographic, and Scientific American. I'm also the creator of Chatter, an open-source AI library for animal communication research.

As an artist, I draw on over a decade of experience in electronic music production and DJing to merge generative composition with scientific data in immersive audio installations. My current work reconstructs the lost voices of endangered and extinct species, inviting audiences to inhabit non-human perspectives and experience the disappearing cultural traditions of the more-than-human world. It has been shown at venues including the New Museum and the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center.

Underlying all of this is a conviction that for animal culture research to have impact, it cannot remain contained within science. It has to be translated and distributed, across code, AI, field recordings, image, sound, and story, carrying knowledge from the lab into public life without losing its rigor or its soul. If you'd like to chat, feel free to reach out!