VIDEO DESCRIPTION:

Play, download and edit the free video Oyster Ostreidae.

Oyster Ostreidae, a collaboration between visual artist Stephanie Rothenberg and sound composer and theorist Suzanne Thorpe, is an immersive multimedia installation engaging sculpture, video and sound that explores the listening body of the heroic oyster. A water filter, sea level mitigator and food source, the oyster is a vital member of our ecosystem that knows habitats for settlement by sensing sound. Specifically, research conducted at North Carolina State University’s Department of Marine, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences found that the bottom-dwelling oyster knows suitable settlement habitats through a distinction of sound signatures in underwater soundscapes. For oysters, sound is a more reliable indicator than chemical exudates or patterns of light. Building on soundscape studies that feature the listening body as an onto-epistemological site, the project leverages data of harbor port movement to query the dynamic relationships between human activity and the wellbeing of oysters. Through the simulated sense of this sonically navigating being, in an immersive sound, visual and sculpted environment, we ask what does a safe harbor sound like? How do we tend to an oyster and how does it tend to us? And can the listening oyster guide us to a politics of mutual tending?

Download, play and edit free videos and free audios from Oyster Ostreidae using RedcoolMedia.net web apps