Surrounded by sound and in complete darkness, listeners are put in the position as if they were swimming in the middle of a group of whales. Every channel of the composition represents one whale and is constantly re-located by the sound generated from the people’s movement in the room. The condition of orientation loss, caused by the interference of the LFA Sonar on cetaceans in the ocean, will be given back to those who have generated it, leading the listeners to presume disorientation/death.
The interest rose some years ago when reading about a whale lost in London’s Thames River. Further investigations lead to finding out about the experiments that the American NAVY and NATO do with the Low Frequency Active SONAR, used for National Defense to scan the Oceans with low and mid frequencies. This interactive installation is based on the sounds emitted by the Beaked Whales (a species particularly affected) during location, migration and foraging stages; and the sound interferences produced by men in the Oceans, also known as anthropogenic sounds. Thanks to the recorded material given by the “Whale Acoustics” an agency working in collaboration with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Cascadia Research and the help of the NOAA – National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency of the U.S.A, I was able to study the habits of the whales and the effects of the Sonar. With this work I want the listeners to feel disoriented and without references, putting them into an analogous situation as the one suffered by this species of whales.