an intimate multichannel sound installation that invites us to experience how insects hear
The sound-installation Louka was created for an exhibition Post-hearing___Post-listening at Galerie AMU (summer 2024) currated by Alexandra Cihanská Machová.
„Evolution has made so many attempts at shaping ears, the result is a huge diversity of structures and mechanisms. Most are hard to spot, if not invisible, and in many cases insects produce and sense sounds so far beyond our own range that we overlooked their abilities entirely.“ Martin C. Göpfert
The sound installation Louka constructs an alternative listening situation informed by the auditory apparatuses of insects. It draws on the sensory configurations of a cricket, grasshopper, cicada, and locust, translating their modes of perception to the scale of the human body. In parallel, the frequencies of their communicative signals are transposed into a range that can be registered not only by the ear, but through bones, muscles, and soft tissues.
Rather than treating hearing as a primarily auditory function, Louka redistributes perception across the body. Listening becomes a somatic, vibratory experience that unsettles the boundary between sensing and being sensed. The installation does not aim to reproduce insect perception, but to situate the human body within a shifted sensory field—one that gestures toward forms of attention and attunement beyond the human auditory norm, and opens a speculative space for interspecies listening.
While the headphones present insect sounds in a familiar way, the speakers embedded in the chair distribute low-frequency vibrations through the body—across the back, calves, thighs, and even internal organs—approximating how different insect species register frequencies through their own sensory systems.