A light and sound installation inspired by how migrating birds sense the Earth’s geomagnetic field to navigate; a process thought to involve quantum entanglement within light-sensitive proteins in their eyes. An array of illuminated pendulums are set in motion by the push and pull of invisible magnetic forces, moving with a high degree of indeterminacy. Each pendulum acts as a light-sensitive instrument, casting sound in the direction of its swing to create an immersive, constantly shifting soundworld based on radio waves, static electricity and signals from the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Commissioned by Instrument Inventors, KONTEJNER and Overtoon 2026, co-produced as part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.

Software by Matthew Olden, Scientific consultants: Alice Wong, Sam England and Daniel Robert.

Premiering at KONTEJNER, Zagreb, 15-24 October 2026. Photos from residency at Overtoon below.

“I’m fascinated by these extremes of scale – how phenomena at the subatomic scale might allow a bird to sense something as vast as the Earth’s magnetosphere.”

“I am interested in creating a sense of ‘atmospheric electricity’ through a constantly shifting electronic soundscape, moving across 27 speakers. I became fascinated by the way bees communicate with flowers through static electricity, and how this suggests a perception of space that is much more attuned to the electrical charges present in the atmosphere.”