Six city-dwellers are portrayed. Its starting point is a memorable encounter between humans and animals.
Underwater visibility is often less than thirty metres; underwater sounds, however, can carry extremely far. It need come as no surprise then that several underwater species communicate via mysterious songs, or that other species use echolocation to navigate. The noise from ships motors, sonar systems and wind turbines disrupts these species’ communications and, in some cases, causes them physical pain. Sound artist Stijn Demeulenaere took to the sea and to the rivers for a poetic exploration of the invisible underwater (sound) landscape, in stories and in the imagination.
Sound installations about the poetry of the sea
Erik Nerinckx captured the tempestuous natural power of the sea in an all-embracing recording: Thalassa! Thalassa! As the visitor walks past he or she is met by a massive wall of sound, an overwhelming murmur coming from sixteen speakers. As he or she walks further that sound becomes more nuanced: an auditory reconstruction of a coastline. In Phonautogram, artist duo VOID visualise the sounds of the sea. They make its water visible by using the 19th-century phonautograph technique of recording sound as visual squiggles. Finally, Norwegian visual artist Cecilia Jonsson presents a work that highlights the pollution of Bruges’s water.