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Otoliths, aqueous notes, 2025
Description:
Otolith is a collaborative project with Akina Thais on producing an immersive experimental and speculative sonic micro theatre for Casino Display’s Echoes and Resonances Collective Artistic Research exhibition on the 8th-15th of May.
The work is a brief theatrical performance for one audience member at a time, based on the Brazilian tradition of Lambe-Lambe theatre. It imagines the sonorous oscillations which take place between an acoustic atmosphere and spatial proximity through gathered stories about fish otoliths. Otoliths are small, solid calcium carbonate structures, located in a fish’s ear, three times denser than the rest of the fish’s body, and an integral part of its orientation and auditory systems.
The research inquiry imagines sonorous oscillations between acoustic atmospheres and spatial proximities, gathering stories around fish otoliths—small stones found in certain species of fish’s ears—not for their physiological properties, but for how folklore, alchemy, medicine, archaeology, and the fish industry have touched upon their features and folded them into diverse human imaginaries. At its core lies a curiosity about how the delayed movements and transits of matter within aqueous chambers might compose temporary sonic envelopments, atmospheres that exist beyond the range of human hearing, prompting the consideration of non-extractive forms of listening—being enveloped even without apprehending sound. This sonic speculation resonates with the spatial intimacy of Lambe-Lambe Theatre, the one-person mobile theatre experience that originated in Salvador, Brazil, in 1989, where proximity, gesture, and duration intertwine. Just as “Lambe-Lambe” recalls the act of licking a photographic negative in its chemical development, the research frames listening as a tactile, gestural practice, an encounter where sound’s presence is sensed through its atmospheric and bodily implications rather than heard directly.
Artistic Research Lab 24/25 - Casino Display
(2025) Luxembourg/ LU
Format:
Duration: 3 min
Sound, Installation, Performance
Otolith is a collaborative project with Akina Thais on producing an immersive experimental and speculative sonic micro theatre for Casino Display’s Echoes and Resonances Collective Artistic Research exhibition on the 8th-15th of May.
The work is a brief theatrical performance for one audience member at a time, based on the Brazilian tradition of Lambe-Lambe theatre. It imagines the sonorous oscillations which take place between an acoustic atmosphere and spatial proximity through gathered stories about fish otoliths. Otoliths are small, solid calcium carbonate structures, located in a fish’s ear, three times denser than the rest of the fish’s body, and an integral part of its orientation and auditory systems.
The research inquiry imagines sonorous oscillations between acoustic atmospheres and spatial proximities, gathering stories around fish otoliths—small stones found in certain species of fish’s ears—not for their physiological properties, but for how folklore, alchemy, medicine, archaeology, and the fish industry have touched upon their features and folded them into diverse human imaginaries. At its core lies a curiosity about how the delayed movements and transits of matter within aqueous chambers might compose temporary sonic envelopments, atmospheres that exist beyond the range of human hearing, prompting the consideration of non-extractive forms of listening—being enveloped even without apprehending sound. This sonic speculation resonates with the spatial intimacy of Lambe-Lambe Theatre, the one-person mobile theatre experience that originated in Salvador, Brazil, in 1989, where proximity, gesture, and duration intertwine. Just as “Lambe-Lambe” recalls the act of licking a photographic negative in its chemical development, the research frames listening as a tactile, gestural practice, an encounter where sound’s presence is sensed through its atmospheric and bodily implications rather than heard directly.
Artistic Research Lab 24/25 - Casino Display
(2025) Luxembourg/ LU
Format:
Duration: 3 min
Sound, Installation, Performance
