pulse/shadow is an embedded audio installation that transforms a room into an active field of vibrating resonant bodies. Embedding the audio in this work – by designing the audio system to run on a concealed, single-board computer and using sculptural objects to generate audible, material responses – allows sound to function as an integral and inseparable part of the installation. The installation space comprises multiple scenes, each featuring sculptural elements constructed from diverse materials, including copper or steel plates, handcrafted cajons (box drums), defaced clocks and lampshades, and glass bowls and vases filled with water to refract light. Some sculptural elements serve as purely visual features, while others act as conduits for transmitting vibrations and sound. Movement through the installation is guided by shards of metal, mirrors, and pipes placed on the floor, demarcating a path and suggesting a flow between each scene. The diversity of materials in each scene, along with the unique vibrations that travel through them, creates spatially distinct micro-environments within the space.

These diverse scenes interact as sounds travel through the room, inviting people to each scene where they can encounter sound in different ways. Within pulse/shadow, sound can be experienced with the ears (cochlear hearing), with the body (corporeal hearing), and through the absence of sound (as some scenes are purely visual and do not transmit vibrations through the environment, shifting the site of listening to the body’s internal pulse and processes). Encounters with cochlear hearing are found in the ticking of mechanical clocks, as well as processed recordings of clocks, filtered noise, electromagnetic activity of various machines, and sounds of water, which are projected through multiple sound sculptures. Corporeal hearing is explored in the cajons, where sitting on the instrument allows low frequencies to travel through the body, vibrating the spine and skull. Other scenes feature sound sculptures that respond to vibrations, producing both audible and visible results, such as Faraday waves in a bowl of water or nodal patterns on a copper plate revealed by reflected light. Amid these vibrating micro-environments, two purely visual scenes allow the body’s internal rhythms and vibrations to become the central source of temporal structure as sound recedes into the background of perception.

I created pulse/shadow as a way to give perceptible form to experiences that resist coherence, stability, and articulation. Working with sound and physical materials as an embodied metaphor for these conditions, I wanted to create scenes that simultaneously attract and repel, guide and abandon, satiate and deprive. Visually delicate phenomena – such as patterns formed in water and on vibrating metal plates – generate sounds and sensations that are unstable and intrusive. When encountered spatially, this tension demands physical commitment; approaching what is visually tranquil or enticing necessitates submitting the body to vibration, pressure, and disturbance. It is this convergence of opposing demands within a single perceptual field that drives the work: gestures that allure and unsettle, surfaces that shimmer in distress. Over time, the installation asks visitors to inhabit instability without reconciliation. Pathways through the space imply motion but withhold direction, extending uncertainty through their fragmented design. Scenes without audible components introduce a sense of disquieting stillness, as vibrations persist elsewhere. Familiar domestic objects appear warm from a distance and reveal themselves as altered and non-functional upon approach, lingering as fractured reflections. In this way, absence plays a role in shaping perception. These nodes of stillness foreshadow the work’s underlying tension, which is focalized at the heart of the space when sitting on the cajons: the disorienting journey through fragmented perception condenses into a unified sensory field as the body becomes embedded within vibration.

pulse/shadow is situated within contemporary sound art and installation practices that engage sound as a spatial, material, and embodied phenomenon. The work draws from traditions of sound art that treat vibration, resonance, and architectural space as foundational materials for investigating perception and bodily orientation. It participates in ongoing conversations around embodiment and perception by positioning sound as a physical presence that actively shapes the space. Through its use of vibration, visual disturbance, and spatialized sound, pulse/shadow approaches listening as an encounter shaped by proximity, orientation, and duration. In this context, the work emphasizes sound’s capacity to structure experience through physical immersion and perceptual instability.