Animal Influence I - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

This sound installation is part of an ongoing body of research, titled towards a feline architecture:
aesthetics and economies of interspecies dwelling, which studies how non-human animals
contribute to the production of urban spatial and material culture. I use hybrid investigative methods
– developed from drawing, tracing, sampling and writing practices in the fields of performance art
and architectural design – to articulate the ephemeral materialities and spatial dynamics between
species in built environments. The research locates instances of performative dwelling or occupation
to propose new configurations of production and understanding between species and spaces. While
the research is led by questions of what non-human species might teach us about aesthetics and
economies of urban dwelling and building, it also aims to unsettle notions of intention and authorship
in art and design through considering the agency of non-human actors in the development of
culture.
For tune in, turn on, drop in (towards a feline architecture), I sampled purring made
by a domestic house cat and edited it as a 5.1 surround sound DVD, emphasizing the bass tones.
I’ve been playing the DVD in various built environments (domestic and institutional) to see how the
resonance and repetitive pattern of this relatively familiar sound affects the ways both the
architecture and audio are read and felt. (If the bass is turned up to a sufficient level, walls and
furniture vibrate.) Transforming the everyday iterations of a domestic house cat to sonically epic
proportions is, in my view, an eco-feminist strategy of ‘making animal’ or ‘purr-sonifying’ spaces that
might be more conventionally read as neutral and / or masculine and / or human. This installation is
leading me to investigate vibration as a mode of interspecies socialisation and territorialisation /
deterritorialisation.
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