When a whale dies, its body sinks to the bottom of the sea. There, in the cold, dark depths, a transformation begins: the ocean brings back life in an unimaginable way.
Thanks to the support of the Okeanos Foundation for the Sea, Nature Writing author Michaela Vieser and sound artist Matas Petrikas have created an immersive sound experience that recreates the phenomenon of a whalefall. Together with the whale, the listeners sink to the bottom of the sea and witness the four phases of transformation from one body into countless organisms. Hypnotically, scientific and empathetic, listeners are taken on this sonic journey and are introduced to beings and forms of existence that live on our planet, but in a completely different world.
Michaela Vieser is a Berlin-based award-winning author of eleven books, including the national bestseller Tea with Buddha and The Atlas of Unusual Sounds (co-authored with Isaac Yuen). Her narrative work has been published by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, BBC, FAZ, Geo, NZZ, Financial Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung and others. Her feature and documentary films have been nominated for the Bavarian Film Prize and the Grimme Prize.
Matas Petrikas is an electronic music producer, DJ and technologist. He has been exploring the boundaries of sound in his native Lithuania since the early 90s, later continuing his professional journey in Berlin. As a member of the SoundCloud founding team and author of the recently published book “The Joy of Electronic Music”, Matas works on tools and educational programmes for the next generation of sound artists.
The whale songs are from the archive of the Bedford Whaling Museum and the sound archive of Dieter Paulmann.
Whalefall is offered as open source to scientific institutions for free use. It is requested that the authors Vieser/Petrikas/Okeanos Foundation be named and informed about the use. Please send an email to michaela.vieser@gmail.com
The museums are free to decide in which technical framework they offer the 10-minute sound piece: via an installation with
headphones next to the whale exhibits, in a kind of cosy corner, to sink to the bottom of the sea or as part of the audio guide.
Distribution via the website and social media is also welcome.