Tending Osteidae: Serenades for Settling 

Tending Ostreidae: Serenades for Settling is a speculative operetta and community science project focused on the listening body of the heroic oyster. A water filter, sea level mitigator and food source, the oyster is a vital member of our ecosystem that senses safe settlement habitats through sound. Indeed, research conducted at North Carolina State University’s Department of Marine, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences found that the bottom-dwelling oyster knows suitable settlement habitats through a distinction of sound signatures in underwater soundscapes. 

Building on soundscape studies that feature listening bodies as onto-epistemological sites, the project leverages data of harbor port movement and local sound to query the dynamic relationships between human activity and the wellbeing of oysters. The project expresses thematic content through an immersive sound, visual and sculpted environment, and in-person interactions, dependent on exhibition and performance opportunities. Through the simulated sense of this sonically navigating being, and participatory and responsive engagement mechanisms, we animate questions such as: 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 listening with oysters guide us to a politics of mutual tending?  

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In addition, we are working with the Billion Oyster Project and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to develop a protocol for oyster restoration organizations to asses noise pollution at potential reef restoration sights.