Serenades for Settling (Tending Ostreidae)

A collaboration between artists Stephanie Rothenberg and Suzanne Thorpe, Serenades for Settling (Tending Ostreidae) is an immersive, data-driven, multimedia exhibition that invites audiences into the captivating subaqueous world of an oyster habitat. The project contemplates the alluring life of oysters, and potential dangers to them posed by the impact of human-made noise, through sound, visuals and robotics. 

The heroic oyster is one of the most vital members of our ecosystem, filtering our waters, mitigating creeping sea rise, and providing necessary nutrition. Oysters are also highly sensitive to sound, and sense safe habitats for settlement and reproduction through sound signatures within underwater soundscapes. This means that human-induced noise poses potential disturbances to oyster populations as they seek to settle and reproduce. 

Serenades for Settling invites audiences into a sensorial ecological narrative told through the listening bodies of oysters. The installation simulates an underwater environment by converging field recordings from oyster reefs in New York City’s East River and synthesized sounds with computer-generated visualizations of an oyster habitat that responds to marine traffic and maritime data from these locations. 

Sculptural oyster reefs house robotic oysters at different life stages. These oysters respond to direct and ambient sounds, as well as to marine traffic data that signals noisy vessels. When loud sounds hit specific frequencies, robotic oysters may close their shells, reopening once the noise subsides or when serenaded. These movements and gestures are based on scientific research that demonstrates that oysters “hear” sound and have distinct responses.

The sonorously speculative oyster habitat encourages participants to listen, and sense, what oysters hear. Through the simulated sense of this sonically navigating being, participants are asked: how do we listen for safe harbors, and what do they sound like? How do we tend to the more-than-human-world and how does it tend to us? And can the listening oyster guide us to a politics of mutual tending?  

Throughout the duration of the exhibition will be a series of performances focused on sound and somatic movement.

The project was created through aquatic research with the Billion Oyster Project (billionoysterproject.org), a NYC-based nonprofit working to ecologically restore the city’s waterways through oyster repopulating initiatives. Funding and support have been provided by the following: New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), 2022 Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center New Works and Creative Residency, 2023 Soil Factory Artist Residency, 2024 FEED.art Artist Residency, University at Buffalo Department of Art, University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, University at Buffalo Center for Embodied Autonomy and Robotics (CEAR) and Professor Karthik Dantu (robotic oyster design), Manhattan University Kakos School of Arts and Sciences, Funds from the Media Arts Assistance Fund, a regrant partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts Electronic Media and Film Program and Wave Farm, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and proceeds raised by Marina Zurkow and Ira Greenberg’s The Dorises – Oystercraft from Silicon to Saltwater. 3D modeling and interaction design is by Beautiful Machine. An earlier iteration was created with support from artist Silvia Ruzanka and sound artist Travis Johns.