Sounding the Air is an aeolian instrument, a musical instrument that is “played“ with the wind. Its sound is produced by five threads of spider silk that drift and resonate with the air.

Real-time video captures the gestures of these “strings”, translating them into sonic frequencies and patterns. These sounds in turn influence the pulsating lights illuminating the work Webs of At-tent(s)ion, creating resonant harmonics between the different spaces.

Sounding the Air thus constitutes a collective creation improvised by an ensemble of forces and bodies: the radiant heat of human bodies, or the flurries and tremors created by the flux and breath of visitors but also the endless intra-actions of different aerial elements — dust, silk, heat, wind, spider, electrostatic force. Together they create a cascade of influences that transform the rhythms of the fluctuating silk threads.

In this immersive sonic environment, every subtle movement alters the compositional whole. Thrown into this acoustic dialogue, each of us becomes musicians in an atmospheric jam, collectively inventing an improvised score.

Sounding the Air draws inspiration from the phenomenon of spider ‘ballooning’, a behaviour in which some spiders use airborne dispersal to move between locations. They release several silk threads into the air which carries them away on updrafts of winds. Individuals or colonies are able to travel long distances on those aerial kites of gossamer silk, buoyed by thermal updrafts and electrostatic force. Those flights allow us to speculate about the possibility of a collective aerial flight and of interspecies attunement and collaboration with the forces of the atmosphere.