6 Nov 2026 – 24 Jan 2027
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Oculus, Basement 2 | ||
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Daily 9am – 6pm |
Free Admission
Sounding Lines listens to how we have shaped the seabed, and how the sea has shaped us in return.
For centuries, the seabed has been a place of ecological life, human labour and technological ambition. In the North Sea, wild oyster beds were depleted by industrial fishing, while oil and gas extraction introduced drilling platforms and pipelines. Today, offshore wind farms and networks of submarine cables are reshaping the seabed once again. An oyster reef, a wind farm and a cable may seem to belong to different worlds, yet each occupies the same underwater terrain, bringing marine life into contact with systems of energy, communication and industry.
For its world premiere at ArtScience Museum, Sounding Lines extends this reflection to Singapore, where the relationship with the sea reaches from coastal waters to infrastructures embedded beneath them. Like the North Sea, Singapore’s seabed is a living and working landscape where ecological, technological and human histories meet.
The installation brings together recordings from some of the last remaining wild oyster beds in the North Sea, sounds from offshore wind farms, and processed sea shanties sung by a women’s choir from Ostend, a historic city on Belgium's North Sea coast that served as a base for the artist's research. These voices move through an immersive spatial composition, inviting us to listen across species, histories and infrastructures.
The title refers to the weighted lines once lowered into the sea to measure its depth. To sound the water was to ask what lay beneath us. Sounding Lines invites us to listen to the seabed, to the traces of our presence, and to the relationships that connect what happens below the surface to the worlds above it.
Image Credit: ©Thibault Sente
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.
Stijn Demeulenaere is a Belgian sound artist, radio maker and musician based in Brussels. His practice explores listening and the phenomenological experience of sound through immersive installations, soundscapes, performances and field recording. Recording in natural and urban environments around the world, he transforms these sounds into explorations of sonic space and perception, trying to understand places by listening to them. His work has been presented internationally at Ars Electronica, BOZAR, Museo Reina Sofía and Casino Luxembourg.
Image Credit: ©Tristan Visser
In accompaniment to Sounding Lines, a series of maps presented in the Oculus traces the transformations in the seabed across time. Viewed together, these maps reveal the North Sea and Singapore’s seabed as a living landscape shaped by the intersections between ecological life, human presence, and industrial activity.
Image Credit: A map from The Piscatorial Atlas of the North Sea, English and St George’s Channels, by O.T. Olsen, F.L.S, F.R.G.S. (Grimsby/London, 1883; map 2).
Ole Theodor Olsen collected comprehensive statistical information on the North Sea by creating a standardised form for ships’ logs, and distributing it to fishermen all over the UK.
Oyster reefs once covered large areas of the North Sea seabed, creating habitats that supported rich marine ecosystems. During the 19th century, new dredging and transportation technologies intensified oyster harvesting. In the early 19th century, shellfish reefs covered around 30% of the seabed; today, less than 1% remains. This map captures a period when industrialisation transformed both marine ecosystems and the ways people worked with the sea.
Image Credit: Map based on data of the NSEC SG2 Timelines Database (North Sea Energy Corporation 2025), the EMODnet Offshore windfarm database (2024), and the OSPAR Offshore Renewables database (2023).
In 2023, nine European countries set a collective ambition to expand offshore wind capacity across the North Sea to at least 300 gigawatts by 2050. The same seabed that once sustained extensive oyster reefs will increasingly support infrastructure that harnesses wind to generate renewable energy, marking another chapter in its transformation into an increasingly human space.
At some offshore wind farm sites, early experiments are exploring whether artificial oyster reefs can create habitats around turbine foundations. This map invites us to consider what might be gained or lost as we reshape the seabed, and how energy production, marine life and environmental restoration might be balanced.
Image Credit: David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford University Libraries. Adapted from Via Eastern: The Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies' Cable System. Cropped from original with legend by ArtScience Museum.
Singapore's first subsea cables were telegraphic lines carrying coded messages across great distances. The laying of cables linking Singapore to Madras in the late 19th century marked the beginning of its emergence as a regional communications hub.
Like the North Sea explored in Sounding Lines, the seabed around Singapore bears traces of changing relationships between people, technology and the marine environment. This map captures a moment when new communication networks began extending across the sea floor, connecting Singapore to a growing web of global exchange. Beneath the water's surface, the seabed was already becoming a place where natural and human histories intersected.
Image Credit: TeleGeography. Adapted from Submarine Cable Map 2026. Cropped from original with legend by ArtScience Museum.
From offshore wind farms in the North Sea to submarine cables in the Singapore Strait, the seabed is becoming an increasingly human space. Replacing the telegraph cables of the 19th century, today’s fibre optic networks carry vast flows of data and communications across continents.
Singapore plans to strengthen its position as an international communications hub, with capacity for submarine cable landings to double over the next decade. As these networks expand further into marine environments, this map invites us to consider our growing dependence on the seabed, and how technological needs might be balanced with the ecological life already present there.
Be a part of the conversation. Gain insights to a line-up of intriguing topics that showcase the best in arts and science.
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