Tickle a Fish
In one of my many mindless scrolls through instagram, some months ago, I was gifted by the fickle algorithm a post which contained a screenshot of a tweet (X will never stick as a name) from the user @bubberdunkus. It reads: “I’d tickle a fish if the wet chime of its laughter could heal us.” Initially this prompted nothing more than a quick puff of air from my nostrils and a double-tap. The words of this tweet stuck with me though. I found myself quoting it, asking friends if they had seen it. I wondered what a fish’s laughter would sound like. Why would it sound like a wet chime? Could it actually be healing? If so I would definitely tickle a fish.
I decided my best use of time for this project – initially – was to try and create the sound of this wet chime. I began researching, reading from Ed Yong’s “Immense World” as well as a book about sound art simply titled “Sound Art” by Alan Licht. At the beginning of my research I was envisioning some finished piece that would clearly display the fruits of my effort. Maybe the viewer would be healed, or confused, but have learned something about fish or the environment. That was until I had read this quote from Alan Licht’s book which I conveniently forgot to write. To summarize, landscape painting is suggested to be one of the first windows into the natural world, and (after photography and video) sound art its predecessor. With an interest in drawing and print media I became excited by the idea of a piece that brought together elements of natural sound, natural imagery, abstraction, and music.
This interest culminated in three plexi-glass mono-prints consisting of organic lines that echo musical scores as well as landscapes. These prints were shown on the floor held in place by river rocks which were collected at the site where the accompanying sound piece was recorded. The sound was a two channel audio installation which consisted of three separate recordings captured at the James river, as well as a recording of wind-chimes tuned to C natural. Through the process of making the prints, recording and producing the sound piece, and placing and experiencing them together as one thing, I found it increasingly less important to me to convey the findings of my research clearly. What was far more interesting and fruitful was to see how research was both directly and indirectly informing the work. This also turned the work into its own kind of research, which I believe will influence future iterations as well as other projects.
This piece was completed in the Fall of 2024