Whisper of the Stars, 2024 - 2025

In the far north of Siberia, winter temperatures drop below -50 degrees Celsius. The air exhaled by a person in these conditions instantly freezes and turns into invisible ice crystals, which, when colliding, form a sound similar to the rustling of moving grains. Before the emergence of scientific explanations, indigenous Yakuts directly linked the abundance of stars in the winter sky with the appearance of a specific sound, which they called “the whispering of the stars”.

Due to climate change, the "whisper of the stars" is increasingly rare in the Far North. Reflecting on the power of storytelling and the possibilities of supporting the sonic diversity of the world, I told this story to people from different countries of South America (living or traveling in South America at the time of the study) and invited them to take part in the experiment. Thanks to them, it was possible to collect recordings of the sounds of different types of grain in motion from 7 countries of South America - the sound most similar to the whisper of the northern stars, according to the Yakuts.

The installation includes recordings: Matias Gatti - Uruguay|Montevideo, Alla Tokareva - Argentina|Buenos Aires, Marcos Volpato - Chile|Santiago, Victoria Gisko - Colombia|Bogota, Bruno Figueiredo - Peru|Ilave, Mario Chervono - Ecuador|Quito, Oksana Rudko - Brazil, Sao Paulo. Following the idea of ​​telling the story from north to south, I placed these sounds in the symbolic constellation of Ursa Major, which is strongly associated with the northern night sky.

The site-specific 7-channel interactive sound installation Whisper of the Stars is presented as part of the 1.2 SACO biennial, following the theme of "Dark Ecosystems", Melbourne Clark Pier, Antofagasta, Chile, 2025. The sound installation consists of motion-sensing wooden boxes containing a unique sound of flowing grain, recorded in different parts of South America. Size: 490cm x 250cm x 150cm