Saltwater Crescendo
sound art, listening device
Vienna, 2022
What if we could listen to deep time as symphonies?
PROJECT BY
Angela Ying Neubauer
Special thanks to Jonas Bohatsch & the Angewandte Coding Lab
Initiated at Design Investigations, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Saltwater Crescendo is an immersive sonic speculation that reimagines Earth’s early oceans through sound.
Developed during Design Investigations in collaboration with Vienna’s Natural History Museum,
the project responds to the discovery of the Gabon fossils: 2-billion-year-old potential evidence of multicellular life.
This speculative soundscape compresses millions of years of alternate evolution into 2.5 minutes, guiding listeners from the eerie silence of primordial waters through bubbling bacterial concerts to the emergent aquatic “songs” of a fictional Gabonionta-descended species. As these imagined creatures evolve to harness soundwaves, their sonic ecology reveals how deeply life and acoustics intertwine.
The project responds to the NHM’s desire to explore speculative narratives around early multicellular life. By stretching beyond human auditory perception, it invites us to experience deep time as a resonant, evolving composition – and reconsider our place in Earth’s biological score.