Bolivian Daniela dreams of recording the sound of seaweed – Caraix

At the top of Menez Kador, a few hundred meters from the house I recently moved into, in Botmeur, the weather is bad enough to put a dog outside. Violent gusts hit her face, but Daniela Laurini remains unfazed. In fact, the peaks of the Monts d’Arrée remind her of La Paz, the Bolivian capital in which she was born, and the highlands of the Andes. “Molinie des moors evokes ‘paja brava’ in the high plateaus. “The colors are beautiful,” she says.

8000 km to see the sea

At the age of 40, the plastic artist made this rocky area her own. It also enjoys relative proximity to the coast. “There are no coasts in Bolivia, and when my parents used to take me out to sea in the past, you had to take an 8,000 kilometer round trip,” she says. What is her passion for seaweed that came from a land without sea? “You’ve fascinated me since I was little.” This “natural and transparent” material delighted the artist, who wanted to observe it in its natural habitat by diving for three days in the heart of the Iroise Marine Park. “You captured my imagination,” she admits.

The fruit of her plastic research on algae is the starting point for the exhibition she is currently showing in Saint-Martin-des-Champs, which bridges the gap between science and art.

In particular, the cyanotype technology is used.

“I collected 13 species of algae that I scanned. I love the experience and the opportunity always comes into play!” admits Daniela, who does not hesitate to play with the shapes, textures and colors of the seaweed.

algae sound

She is also passionate about sound, which she sometimes incorporates into her work. During a scholarship at Tourcoing, I worked with bioacoustics (decoding the sounds emitted by living organisms) such as the famous Jérôme Sueur, of the Museum of Natural History. The latter told him about the sound the algae make when they release oxygen.

Since then, I’ve dreamed of “recording that noise” and would like to compose “soundtracks” in which seaweed is the bedrock. An incomplete research that she intends to pursue in the framework of an upcoming stay in Roscoff. And yet the underwater forests? “The forest attracts me, as well as the swamps,” she asserts. Other explorations to be made…

Exercise

The exhibition “Forest Under the Sea” by Daniela Laurini at the Cultural Center Le Rodor in Saint-Martin-des-Champs. Admission is free, Wednesday through Friday, from 2 pm to 5:30 pm, and Saturday from 10 am to 12:30 pm and from 3 pm to 5:30 pm.