Louise E. Carver - The Aquarium is a Listening Glass

When used as a listening instrument, a glass is no longer a mere container. By amplifying sounds and voices through a surface, it becomes a conduit between two seemingly distant environments. Like a glass, aquarium walls implement a material and ontological separation between human and marine creatures, highlighting the relationship we have established over time with these living beings, transformed into taxonomical units. In The Aquarium is a Listening Glass, nine short, non-linear stories – set amid scientific archives, underwater research stations, natural history museums, national aquaria and oceanic infrastructure – evoke the glass as a listening device to present singular relationships between humans and fish that would otherwise go unheard. In this paradigm shift, design plays a fundamental role in conceiving the object (and the book) as a sensory device to glimpse new forms of mediation, to generate alliances, and also to promote the potential for a thriving and vital world.