Video: https://vimeo.com/1021976169

Ephemeral performance in which a sea cave in California transmogrifies into a cello-like sound sculpture via wire and bow.

Sea cave, wire, cello bow.

Rigby welded a sound sculpture with found brass objects with which to tension wire throughout the length of a sea cave, and bowed the wire in a series of durational performances with her cello bow during low and high tides. The sea cave itself became the cello body, with an immense resonant capacity, as well as a means to think about relationships among sound and deep time.

Sea caves are sites for researching sonic and material decay. They are places to think about physical and acoustical architecture, sonic and material degeneration, shifting seascapes, resonance and vibration, multispecies relationships and sensory ecology, and entanglements among humans and more-than-humans. It is a place to think about local and global environmental phenomena and how they intertwine. It is a place to think about growth and decay, loss and renewal, kinship and wonder, climate grief and climate futurities, deep time and breathing.

The resonance of a sea cave—activated by Rigby’s sound sculptures and cello bows—speaks to the way geologic time shapes physical space and acoustical range. When we hear the resonant signature of a sea cave being activated by a sound sculpture, we are listening to the cave’s acoustical anatomy as well as its history. We are hearing the resonance of centuries of climatic phenomena acting upon the site.

What does it mean to find new ways to listen, to pay attention, in these uncertain times? Can paying attention manifest as a kind of consciousness, a kind of political act?

The sound sculpture, installation and performance left no trace on the sea cave or the surrounding environment.

2024