2025

Ampullae of Lorenzini is a sensory fable, a dreamlike initiation into the imagined experience of electroreception, the ability to perceive electrical currents. Through ritual, surreal imagery, and a visceral score by Tim Merrikin, the work asks: what might it feel like to sense the world through electricity?

The installation includes a video at its centre, surrounded by artifacts that extend its mythology into the gallery. The installation becomes a charged field, inviting viewers to cross from observer to initiate, where science, myth, and ritual entwine.

The narrative follows a witch-like figure wearing a mask patterned on a stingray's electrical pathways. She conjures a blue rose from the sea; returning it to the water, she is gifted an ampulla - a poetic nod to the organs that allow sharks to sense electrical signals. Initiated, she enters the particle world, gathering clear orbs and carrying them toward glowing fields of colour. The colours shift to show positive, negative, and neutral charges, reflecting how bees balance electricity in flowers. Through this, she awakens fully to electroreception and becomes a vessel of multispecies perception. The work imagines electroreception as a mythic way of sensing, attuning to the hidden currents of the world beyond ordinary perception. ​

Sound by: Tim Merrikin

Performed by: Holly Buntman-Ronnenberg, Matrika Suntra Crockett-Keen, and the artist's Mum