About
Gustavo Maggio, Wendy Chua, Joyce Beetuan Koh (Artist Collective)
Gustavo Maggio is an industrial designer who envisions design as an agent of change in the climate crisis, delving into novel materials and circular production systems. With Wendy, he co-founded Forest & Whale as a practice to advocate for social and environmental care through social care strategies, community engagement and exhibitions. Wendy Chua is an interdisciplinary researcher in the art-science. Drawn to making invisible toxicities tangible, she is collaborating with marine scientists to explore the climate precarity of harmful algal blooms in fragile coastal ecosystems. Award-winning composer Joyce Beetuan Koh writes concert music, works in dance collaborations, and creates sound installations, multimedia productions, and films. Underpinning her creative impulse is a fascination with architectural structures and scientific theories, and the result is a language that is abstract and self-contained.
Artist Statement
Tuning into the thriving sea of haptic silence that surrounds one in a diving experience, tactile acoustics are woven into a full-body sound experience for sensing climate precarity in our ocean. From the sonar signatures of whales to the pulsating microcosm of phytoplankton, we sink deeper into the tonality of silence as one submerges under the thin blue line. Bioacoustics, translated into sensory pulses within VR wearables, shed light on these more-than-human narratives in the wild blue media. Encapsulated within these immersive encounters are the intrusion of anthropogenic pollutants and bioluminescent toxicities of algal blooms as the participant dives into the entanglements of coastal assemblages.
A whale sings in the distance, and a school of fishes rush by, these encounters translate into pitches and rhythms that seemingly brush past our skin, creating tingling sensations. The underwater world is an extraordinary experience but it remains a luxury out of reach for the marginalised. For persons with severe disabilities, it may never be a possibility.How could inclusive soundscapes be sculpted through haptic-sensory, multi-modal exploration? As the world becomes inundated with visual and social media noise—saying infinitely more yet unbearably little at once—it seems apt to dive into the vast spectrum of silence in its diverse densities, from the fluid in our cochlea canals to deep sea media.
Project : Haptic ReSilence of the Wild Blue
Tuning into the thriving sea of haptic silence that surrounds one in a diving experience, tactile acoustics are woven into a full-body sound experience for sensing climate precarity in our oceans. Bioacoustics, translated into sensory pulses within VR wearables, shed light on more-than-human narratives in the wild blue media.
Past works
