Dark Siren

"As both a sound that disrupts the everyday to signal an emergency, and a mythical hybrid water creature, the siren connects recent mechanical and digital phenomena with ancient belief. Whether emanating from myth or machinery, the siren is a moment of call and response—a perpetual loop of song and feedback, crisis and action.

Dark Siren is a generative sound installation that builds on Friedrich Kittler’s notion of recursion, exploring how technologies loop and reflect on themselves- transforming complex systems of ecology and time. In the installation, this loop is altered by human proximity and interaction to raise the question of intention and responsibility.

Inspired by early recording technologies and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, the sound machine uses psychoacoustic effects to challenge the conventional view of sirens as state-controlled devices, returning the auditory experience to the collective. The installation underscores the sirens' expansive potential in navigating a state of perpetual crisis."