The Echo of Our Breath

4-channel sound installation with Co2 sensor, video

LCC, London UK

2019

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Visuality is limited in the dense Brazilian Amazon rainforest and the sense of hearing becomes essential in the way we perceive this place. The trees and the forest ground create a natural reverberation that echoes our voice, bouncing around the Spatio-temporal locale of our presence, reflecting traces of our own making and, finally, disappearing into the overwhelming soundscape of the abundant Amazonian ecosystem. Invisible soundwaves travel through the thick Amazonian air: the air of the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sink that has a significant role in pulling carbon dioxide (Co2) out of the atmosphere; the air of a forest that is currently being burnt as a result of massive deforestation actions.

 

The Echo of Our Breath is a Co2-sensor-based multimedia installation, comprised of sound and video materials that were captured in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest during the summer of 2019. Constantly affected by the changing amount of Co2 in the installation space as a result of peoples’ breathing, this installation offers a timespace where the unseen impact of our own presence can be sensed through sound, an invitation to think about the air that we breathe and the way it is affected by anthropogenic processes.

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Created as a response to participation as an artist in residence in Labverde programme, the Adolpho Duke Forest Reserve, Amazon, Brazil, August 2019. Supported by the AER Art for the Environment programme, University of the Arts London.  Presented as part of the "Heightened States of Awareness" exhibition, LCC, London, December 2019. 

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The work was nominated for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2021, Batsford Prize 2021 and the Ashurst Art Prize 2020.