Invisible Kelp Forest: From Smell to Sound is an 8-channel sonic composition that explores the possibility that sound is an ideal medium for translating senses of smell, or chemosensation underwater.It invites the listener to smell the kelp forest with their ears, a mode of synaesthesia.

We explore the ways that sound and smell can both convey intensity, distance, dispersion, texture, and elements of memory that may be specific to particular organisms. We imagine that the olfactory memory of the kelp forest is multiple, linked to what is meaningful for different marine fauna.

We plan to choose 3-6 different marine organisms, and create sonic impressions of their chemosensory experiences of the kelp forest in a scientifically-informed manner. Invisible Kelp Forest plays with invisibility in several ways: by denying the listener any visual cues, they must use their imagination to conjure a spatial sense of the kelp forest on their own.

We invite listeners to pay attention to the way that listening for smell feels in the body, perhaps deterritorializing the sensorium. Our project to translate the underwater smellscape of a kelp forest is a way of evoking a particular kind of archival memory, one that is usually not “for” human beings, who cannot smell while underwater.

Given the fact that the historical range of kelp forests around the world is shrinking (bull kelp forests on the west coast, giant kelp forests in Tasmania), Invisible Kelp Forest gestures to these absences while modeling a unique form of sensory speculation and transductive mediation.