Reethaus and Soundwalk Collective present a live performance by Tomoko Sauvage during Berlin Art Week, interpreting her ongoing research into the musical qualities of bubbles, water droplets, feedback, and practices of hydromancy.
Over the course of two decades of research and experimentation, Sauvage has developed signature electro-aquatic instruments that she calls Waterbowls. Built on the template of the traditional South Indian instrument jal tarang, Waterbowls are assemblages made up of a porcelain or glass receptacle, water and hydrophones. Magnifying tiny sounds that are otherwise quasi-inaudible, Sauvage’s idiophones create freshwater symphonies that gong through space, dousing listeners with liquid resonance.
Taking bubbles as one of her principal research concerns, Sauvage has explored the kinetic patterns of air pockets produced by submerged cowrie shells, unglazed terracotta, and disturbed lake beds. These genres of singing bubbles, each of a different size, from different locations and situations, produce varying hues for Sauvage’s composition. Her practice of working with acoustic feedback, a phenomenon generally considered troublesome, has also led her to engage with architecture, approaching the acoustic space itself as part of the instrument.
For Sauvage, making music with waterbowls is a kind of alchemy in which she marshalls the elements of earth (stone or clay), air (which propagates the sound waves), water (the patterned medium) and electricity (as fire), altering each to make her sounds.
With this performance at Reethaus, Sauvage references the role of the moon in the biocosmic circuit in which water is perpetually engaged on our planet, along with practices of Taoist inner alchemy. In The Moon Gathers Up the Ten Thousand Waters, we can hear the edge of Sauvage’s sonic research, a composition of sounds shaped by her play with water, hydrophones, porcelain, glass, stones, shells and electronics.