BIO

Christina is an artist and freshwater ecologist based in Vienna. She works at the intersection of art and science; her work deals with societal phenomena that shape our world. Gruber investigates the effects human activities have and had on the landscape and how they’ve shaped the Earth’s surface, specifically focusing on water. In the last years, water is of special interest to her. As it is the element that all things on Earth, including humans, have in common. Water is the connector between stories of different places and layers, running through everything, from clouds to data centers.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

HOUSTON, CAN YOU HEAR ME?  Species in alliance

The project deals with the development of a non-human approach towards the use of technology to better understand our environments and entanglements with companion species. HOUSTON CAN YOU HEAR ME? develops her current research in the field of bioacoustics and how sound recordings in riverine environments can help to transform common field sampling practices that are based on constant extraction of specimen and their extraction of their livelihoods. Important for me with this project is not to produce additional huge amounts of data, to be harvested, but the approximation to another world, usually invisible due to turbidity and to focus on another sense, the hearing. It is the active test to show that we do not depend on data, as we reach the limits to forecast the future based on models and get back to experience. To hear like a fish means to hear with your entire body, using it to navigate in space and feel your surroundings. HOUSTON CAN YOU HEAR ME? reveals also the stresses caused by sound pollution underwater and how a sonic ecology has to be developed, so we can resonate together on this planet.