5 Jun 2026 (Fri)
 |
7pm – 7.45pm |
 |
Oculus, Basement 2 |
Free Admission with Registration
Oslo-based Norwegian sound artist Jana Winderen activates ArtScience Museum’s Oculus as a resonant body attuned to the acoustic life of the ocean in a live performance.
Working at the intersection of art and scientific inquiry, Winderen draws on her background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology to access and render audible complex sonic ecologies. Using hydrophones, she records entire underwater environments: the crackle of crustaceans, the interactions of fish, and the vocalisations of marine mammals. These recordings, often captured in remote and extreme conditions, are sculpted through processes of close listening and spatial composition.
For this live presentation, Winderen mobilises this sonic archive within the architectural conditions of the Oculus, composing across its 360-degree system to produce a dynamic field of listening. Sounds that originate in ultrasonic ranges are transposed into an audible spectrum, allowing audiences to encounter otherwise imperceptible modes of communication. The performance does not simply reveal hidden worlds, but reconfigures the listener’s position within them.
At the same time, Winderen’s work foregrounds the fragility of these ecosystems. Human-generated noise permeates the oceans at an unprecedented scale, disrupting the sensory and communicative capacities of marine life. Within her compositions, these pressures are felt — as interference, saturation and the subtle erosion of acoustic space. Listening becomes an ethical act, attuning us to the far-reaching consequences of human activity across interconnected environments.
The performance invites audiences to inhabit the Oculus as a situated listening chamber that considers the relational dynamics between bodies, technologies and ecologies, and opens onto the ocean as an evolving, contested acoustic commons.
Free Admission
Presented in collaboration with artists and creatives, ArtScience Encounters is an invitation to discover curious spaces hidden within ArtScience Museum’s unique architecture.
Jana Winderen is an artist based in Norway with a background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology. Her practice pays particular attention to audio environments and to creatures which are hard for humans to access, both physically and aurally — deep under water, inside ice or in frequency ranges inaudible to the human ear. Her activities include site-specific and spatial audio installations and concerts, which have been exhibited and performed internationally in major institutions and public spaces.
Winderen’s recent work includes The River at Jerwood Gallery, Natural History Museum, London, Absent Voices, Haus der Kunst, Munich, The Art of Listening: Underwater at Lenfest Center for the Arts, Colombia University, New York, Listening through the Dead Zones for IHME, Helsinki, The Art of Listening: Underwater for Audemar Piguet at Art Basel, Miami, Rising Tide at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Listening with Carp for Now is the Time in Wuzhen, Through the Bones for Thailand Art Biennale in Krabi, bára for TBA21_Academy, Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone for Sonic Acts, Dive in Park Avenue Tunnel in New York and Ultrafield for MoMA, New York.
In 2011 Winderen won the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica for Digital Musics & Sound Art. She releases her audio-visual work on Touch (UK).
Into the Ocean: Journey Beneath is a collaboration between ArtScience Museum and OceanX, making its world premiere this June. It invites visitors on a descent through the depths of the sea, from the sunlit surface waters to the darkest reaches of the ocean.
Free Admission
Presented in collaboration with artists and creatives, ArtScience Encounters is an invitation to discover curious spaces hidden within ArtScience Museum’s unique architecture.
7 Mar – 3 Jun 2026
Stridulations is a site-responsive, multi-channel sound installation by Vienna-based sound artist Robert Schwarz, devised for the Oculus at ArtScience Museum. Adapted from Schwarz’s long-running research into insect and arthropod communication, the work takes its name from stridulation — a process through which sound is produced by friction between chitinous body parts.
Be a part of the conversation. Gain insights to a line-up of intriguing topics that showcase the best in arts and science.