Sounding Lines
Sounding Lines listens to the echo of how we humans have shaped the seabed of the North Sea over the last 200 years. With the advent of steam powered ships, we fished away almost all of the wild oyster beds in the North Sea during the 19th century. The 20th century saw a rush on the oil- and gasreserves of the North Sea, and the construction of dozens of offshore drilling platforms, and many kilometers of pipelines.
In the next few decades we’ll build hundreds of offshore windmills and a whole network of submarine electricity (and other) cables, restructuring the sea floor for the third time in two centuries.
A map by 4C Offshore, showing all the currently operational offshore windfarms, the ones under construction, and the sites where permits for development have either been granted, submitted, or are being researched in order to apply for offshore windfarms development permits
We often imagine the sea as a space without people, liquid wilderness. But the sea is increasingly also a human space. We shape its waters as much as we do the land. Humanity has always been strongly connected to the sea, but in modern times, that connection is evermore increasing. 90% of the global trade happens through maritime transport. More than 3 billion people depend on the oceans and seas for a significant part of their diet. 15% of the global population lives within 5 km of a coast, and that number is only growing. And increasingly the sea itself has become a human space, not only on the water, with shipping and fishing, but also under water, and on or under the sea bed, with underwater cables, deep sea mining, oil-and gas rigs, fish farms, and offshore windmills. In the North Sea, almost every cubic cm knows some kind of human presence. It is as much a cultured landscape as the rest of Western Europe.
Right now, we are at a new turn in our culturing of the sea bed. Over the next decades we will change the North Sea dramatically. In an effort to move away from fossil fuels, and increasingly for geopolitical purposes, Europe wants to increase the offshore electricity generation tenfold by 2050, and by a factor of four by 2030. This means we’ll be building a lot of new windmills, and the accompanying infrastructure. On top of that, initial research is done on artificial oyster reefs, as a nature based solution to defend against coastal erosion, and to creates sites to increase and preserve the biodiversity of the North Sea. Some hope to combine these two and rewild the hard substrate on which the windmills are built with artificial oyster reefs.
Sounding Lines reflects on these past, present and future changes of the North Sea seabed. The installation brings the sounds from offshore windfarms together with recordings from some of the last remaining wild oyster beds in the North Sea, and processed sea shanties. The sea shanties are sung by an amateur ladies choir from Ostend, embodying a traditional and generational bond to the sea. These three voices come together in an immersive spatialised sound installation. The piece exists in different forms, as a concert, as binaural experience wading through the water, and as an 8 channel surround sound installation. Sounding Lines offers a space where the audience can reflect in how we deal with a space so different from ours, how far our hands reach, ponder about how intertwined our society is with the sea, how complicated that balance is, and wonder where they see themselves in this relationship
The title of the installation, Sounding Lines, refers to the way we used to measure the depth of bodies of water. We've always wanted to know what's down there, what's beneath us. A question that starts with how much space there is there. Nowadays we measure this with sonar. But we used to throw a weight with a line of rope into the sea, with markers telling us the distance it travelled before it hit the sea bed. Sounding here refers to a sound as a body of water. But these days, we should perhaps also listen to the voices of the sea.
Sounding Lines premiered at Ars Electronica 2025. You can see a small snippet of the performance below. More dates TBA soon.
Sounding lines exists in different shapes, the wading performance, an octophonic installation and a live set. The live set avant-premiered as a quadraphonic live set at POROUS - Ports as Interspecies Dwellings event by TBA21 at Villa Arson (Nice, FR), during the UN Ocean conference 2025. Below you can hear a stereo excerpt of the original surround sound performance.
And as a second teaser, this is an untouched recording of an oyster reef during the death of night
Credits
Sounding Lines is part of the STARTS4Water II residency programme by GLUON with the support of the S+T+ARTS programme of the European Union.
Conceived, created & composed by Stijn Demeulenaere
- Production
- Co-Production
- In collaboration with
- Recordings by
- Recording assistants
- Musical Dramaturgy by
- Singer / contralto
- Choir
- voice
- Scientific support by
- Wadden guide
- Kunstenwerkplaats
- Gluon
- Flanders Marine Institute - VLIZ
- Overtoon
- De Brakke Grond
- Stijn Demeulenaere
- Flanders Marine Institute - VLIZ
- Ioana Mandrescu
- Tristan Visser
- Thibault Sente
- Ioana Mandrescu
- Cécile Pilorger
- Cécile Pilorger
- Dameskoor Aimée Thonon conducted by Steve Dugardin
- Davis Freeman
- dr. Elisabeth Debusschere
- Maryann Watson
- dr. Jan Seys
- dr. Sarah Schmidlin
- Simon Gerritsen
Sounding Lines was made possible with the help of Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), Kunstenwerkplaats, Gluon, De Brakke Grond, the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), TBA21 and Overtoon. Many thanks to dr. Elisabeth Debusschere, dr. Maryann Watson, dr. Jan Seys, Mathieu Wille, Sarah Schmidlin, dr. Thomas Vandorpe, Karlien Vanhoonacker, Lieve Demin, Eva Welkenhuysen, Lore Sommereyns, Ioana Mandrescu, Cécile Pilorger, Steve Dugardin, Joost Fonteyne, Otis Dehaes, Simon Gerritsen, Tristan Visser, Christophe De Jaeger, Ramona Van Gansbeke, Dirk Halet, Leander Schönweger, Johan Vandermaelen, Lara van Lookeren, Laure Martroye, Koen De Wilde, Ronny Dewaele, Jacky Puystjens, Pieter-Jan Valgaeren, Gaspard Berger, Wim Pauwels, Daniel Demoustier, Nikki Sheth, Davis Freeman; the crews of Kunstenwerkplaats, Gluon, Overtoon, RV Simon Stevin, Flanders Marine Institute - VLIZ, De Brakke Grond, and many more.
