Frederik De Wilde

This video presents EOD04/EOD02, an installation in the permanent collection of ZKM in Karlsruhe built around weakly electric fish, species that perceive their environment and communicate with one another by emitting electric signals in the water, either in pulses or in waves. The title refers to these signals, known as electric organ discharges. The fish swim in plexiglass tubes fitted with arrays of antennas, which capture their signals and send them directly to speakers, turning them into sound. LED lights placed inside each tube follow the position of every fish as it moves. What we hear through the headphones is the fishes’ electro-communication and sensing at work, and it changes as the quality of the water declines. De Wilde treats the fish as living bio-monitoring systems, turning the installation into an instrument for listening to an ecosystem and to forms of interspecies communication that normally lie beyond human perception.