“At this hour, the pampa heaves like a sea.”
Baldomero Fernández Moreno
53° 46' 47'' S / 67° 40' 17'' W
A systematic record of low tides, captured from the same vantage point between January 2014 and July 2016 in Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.
Tidal Music
Tidal movements are recorded in tide tables, which indicate the dates and times of low and high tides, along with their corresponding heights.
In 2016, while filming the tides in the Magallanes region, Malala Lekander had a dream in which she constructed a potential sound system based on the superimposition of tidal data gathered during the filming.
“I would plot a Cartesian coordinate system: sea height on the Y-axis and the time of day on the X-axis. I would mark the two high tides and two low tides for a given day, then place a sheet of translucent paper over it to plot the data for the next day, and so on. Eventually, this layered system allowed me to visualize every single data point—represented as dots—contained within a lunar cycle spanning two consecutive full moons. Then I asked myself: Is this music?”
COORDENADAS 52°40’ 00’’ S 68° 36’ 00 ́ ́O
Sello Postal
Tidal Music for Cello
Aiming to draw even closer to the graphs generated from tidal data, Lekander began studying the cello and investigated tidal phenomena alongside scientist and musician Alberto Rojo (Argentina), through whom she was introduced to the concept of the amphidromic system. In 2020, inspired by this system, she devised a method for interpreting tide tables through the cello.
This work was presented in concerts in Ushuaia, Argentina (La Nuit des Idées, 2022); Matera, Italy (Tidalites, 2022); Düsseldorf, Germany (Klangraum, 2023); and at the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel, France (Soirée Grande Marée, 2023), among other venues.
