“HIVE” by Şölen Kiratli, Akshay Cadambi
Title:
- HIVE
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Medium:
- Installation
Artist Statement:
Created via fusing aspects of spatial sound, sculptural form, and interactive methods, HIVE is an interactive art installation that explores the notion of sentience and agency in the sonic medium. It is argued that species evolve to establish and maintain their own vocal bandwidth, so that their voices are not masked by other sounds. In other words, sonic spectrum is partitioned in a given biome and each bandwidth is claimed by a certain species as their vocal territory. Many species rely on these territories for mating or survival. Today, human generated noise dominates the sonic spectrum of many ecosystems, even those we consider untouched by our activities. And yet, there is very little research or policy efforts on this, especially compared to other (non-acoustic) types of destruction of the environment.
In reaction to this, our inquiry started with the question, can we conceive of an organism that exists in a purely acoustic umwelt? An organism whose only way of sensing, observing, reacting, and communicating with the world is through sound. An organism with a body whose morphology is based on picking up and sending sound signals. A pseudo ‘being’ who can learn from its environment and evolve in its response.
