Sounds Like is an audio series from Infrasonica, a digital platform dedicated to non-Western sonic arts and cultures. For Sounds Like, we invited three artists from our network of collaborators to respond with a sound piece to our three editorial lines to date: Sonic Realism, Audible Matter, and Voicing Abstraction.

We commissioned Vibeke to create a sound piece responding to Sonic Realism, Infrasonica's first Current, which explored the possibilities of sound beyond the audible. Mashini’s artistic approach utilizes unconventional energy sources to explore the complex relationship between source and user, constructing installations where memory and sensorial experiences meld with energy storage systems. One such recent installation, Jolt, A Long Distance Lullaby, shown at PAKT Amsterdam earlier this year, forms the foundation for Vibeke’s collaboration with Sounds Like. Comprised of a series of sound pieces composed with the artist and musician Nyksan, the project takes the idea of a lullaby, a tender, soothing practice, and combines it with the X account (formerly Twitter) of Miguel Wattson, an Amazonian electric eel housed at the Chattanooga aquarium in Tennessee. Thanks to some creative rigging, Miguel fires off a prefabricated tweet, whenever he omits an electric jolt. Contrary to the nightmarish position they occupy in our imaginary as half-beast, half-machine, Electric eels most often dispense shocks when under distress or as an act of self-preservation. The same could be said of our use of platforms like X, and it’s within that dynamic that Vibeke’s work aims to find commonality, relief, and compassion.

To discuss Jolt, A Long Distance Lullaby as well as her practice at large, Vibeke is joined by Infrasonica’s Editor in Chief, Pablo José Ramírez in the first three episodes of the audio show Sounds Like

→ Listen to Sounds Like | Vibeke Mascini | Episode 1