ArtScience Encounters: Sounding Lines by Stijn Demeulenaere

Sounding Lines listens to how we have shaped the seabed, and how the sea has shaped us in return.

For centuries, the seabed has been a place of ecological life, human labour and technological ambition. In the North Sea, wild oyster beds were depleted by industrial fishing, while oil and gas extraction introduced drilling platforms and pipelines. Today, offshore wind farms and networks of submarine cables are reshaping the seabed once again. An oyster reef, a wind farm and a cable may seem to belong to different worlds, yet each occupies the same underwater terrain, bringing marine life into contact with systems of energy, communication and industry.

For its world premiere at ArtScience Museum, Sounding Lines extends this reflection to Singapore, where the seabed is both living landscape and infrastructure. The installation brings together recordings of wild oyster beds, offshore wind farms and processed sea shanties, inviting us to listen differently to what lies beneath, and to the relationships that connect what happens below the surface to the worlds above it.

Image Credit: ©Thibault Sente