Hagop Ohannessian

Six acoustic panels carry spectrograms of vocalizations from six cetacean species — Right Whale, Vaquita, Orca, Dolphin, Pilot Whale, Risso's Dolphin — sealed inside reclaimed plastic. A loudspeaker inducer behind each panel plays a twenty-minute six-channel composition that interleaves cetacean song with the noise pollution of the shipping industry, ending in the uncomfortably loud crescendo of nearby dredging.

The work draws a direct line between disruptions in the whale's environment and disruptions in our own attentional space. Whales perceive the ocean through sound across hundreds of kilometres. Our trade routes, the same routes that move our consumer goods, render that perception increasingly unreadable.

The title borrows from acoustics: rarefaction names the low-density phase of a wave, the moment of expansion between compressions. The work stages a small congregation of bodies caught in that phase — half-emerged, between solid and air, their skin holographic and refractive, never the same colour to two viewers at once.

Built for Nuit Blanche Toronto under the theme Breaking Ground. Iridescent mylar — the disposable festive material of party stores — is reframed here as substrate: a glittering ground that throws ambient light back up into the skin of the sculptures, so that the figures and the floor share a single optical field.

Performed in Walker Court under the AGO's iconic spiral staircase, the work unfolds across two large screens as a 35-minute live set. Satellite imagery, real-time data visualizations, and generative graphics collide with a 6-channel spatial soundtrack — moving from the graphic geometry of power grids and pipeline networks to the turbulent abstraction of atmospheric data streams.

The title holds three terms in deliberate tension: the machine as infrastructure and instrument, the human as performer and witness, and nature as both subject and system — reduced to datasets, yet stubbornly excessive. The performance proposes that these three terms are no longer separable, that the planet is already post-natural, already mediated, already running on code.

Performed in Walker Court using generative art software and Stream Diffusion, the set moves through lush colour fields and textural imagery inspired by Pacita Abad's vibrant, maximalist practice — building an immersive sonic and visual environment that honours the energy and geography of her work.