Abyssal Plains explores the entanglement between nature, technology, and environmental disruption in the deep sea. A decaying voice recounts intimate memories of drowning and ambiental disruption. Sonic fragments —bodily, mechanical, aquatic—disintegrate into interference, like signals trapped in the abyss. These distortions mirror the fragmented visuals: microscopic sand grains twisted by artificial light, and a cable that harbors the secrets of the depths. The sound hints towards collapse, its rhythm mimicking the disruption of deep-sea ecologies to support modern technology. Through layered, destabilizing audio, the work channels a sensorial discomfort, asking: what happens when interference, decay, and memory echo through the void? How do we listen to landscapes out of sight?
This piece was created by Lucía Cozzi. The narration is the result of a series of conversations with Cristalina Parra, Mollie Moore, Kayla Archer, and Dulce Lamarca - artists working closely with water as matter.
As if coming in and out of a dream, perhaps a nightmare, in Abyssal Plains we are taken through a journey that contemplates the possibility that the human, the non-human, ecology, and technology, are all interconnected.
Film Credits
Created, produced, and edited by Lucía Cozzi.
Graphics by María Bonomi.
Special thanks to María Bonomi, Nina Bowers, Moolie Moore, and Susan Bowman.
Audio Credits
Created, produced, and narrated by Lucía Cozzi.
Words by Kayla Archer, Dulce Lamarca, Moolie Moore, Cristalina Parra.
Sounds by Kayla Archer, Lucía Cozzi, Dulce Lamarca, Moolie Moore, Cristalina Parra.
Archival Sounds by Real VHSVCR intense distortion and interference VFX with sound (16_9 widescreen) [Free to use], Youtube, and Archival Sound, AV-3702 Impacto tecnológico - Archivo Prisma, Youtube.
Images
Transcript
[Archival Sound, Real VHSVCR intense distortion and interference VFX with sound (16_9 widescreen) [Free to use], Youtube plays]
[Archival Sound, AV-3702 Impacto tecnológico - Archivo Prisma, Youtube plays]
[Playtronica-Sound, El Sueño, Lucía Cozzi]
LC: A plastic bag flies away, and falls slowly, as if it was a dry leaf in the forest, it comes from another world and it falls…
[Sound, pinn, DL]
LC: It goes down, and down, and down, and it tries to touch the bottom of the sea
[Sound, throat, LC]
LC: The sunrays go through the horizon, you can see flecks on the water of living things, the silkiness of the water, and then, its a very gradual decline...
[Sound, deep, MM]
[Archival Sound, AV-3702 Impacto tecnológico - Archivo Prisma, Youtube ends]
[Sound, signal distortion, LC plays]
LC: Imagine us, as a part of it,
[Sound, tummy-1, DL]
LC: and it, as a part of us.
[Sound, tummy-1, MM]
LC: Light, signals, glass, body, copper, spirits…
[Sound, breathing, LC plays]
LC: I remember going swimming and feeling nauseous because the water felt like a bathtub. I grew up with this feeling that in the bottom of the sea, there were these bodies
[Sound, breathing, LC ends]
[Sound, heartbeat, MM plays]
LC: And a slow rain of teeth, shark teeth, human bones, non-human bones, garbage, waste, cables, algae, blind fish, mute fish, worms, sand, rocks, aquatic robots…
[Sound, air, KA]
LC: a large drain-like tube, giant tubes at the bottom of the sea.
[Sound, popop, DL]
[Sound, signal distortion, LC ends ]
[Archival Sound, Real VHSVCR intense distortion and interference VFX with sound (16_9 widescreen) [Free to use], Youtube (second track) plays]
LC: A global system of isolation. And the tractors pass by right there…
[Sound, zzzz, DL]
[Sound, scratching, CP]
LC: A greener alternative. A greener alternative. A greener alternative.
[Archival Sound, Real VHSVCR intense distortion and interference VFX with sound (16_9 widescreen) [Free to use], Youtube (second track) end]
[Sound, wind at Fire Island, LC plays]
LC: Like something that wakes up, but in reality it recognizes an alert. to recognize that a storm is coming. To see a cloud, and recognize that a storm is coming. A storm is coming...
[Sound, waowaowao, CP]
[Sound, shooooeshooooe , MM]
[Sound, wind at Fire Island, LC ends]
[Sound, ambient at Fire Island, LC plays]
LC: It never goes out, every night you go to bed and you see how they are extracting the oil. And in the day there is the same fire, but you can't see it because the light doesn't allow you to. But the air, takes on a thickness as if it were heavier, and at night you could see the fire…and it created like a halo of light, that illuminated the extraction site and the water.
[Sound, shhhhhshhhh, MM]
[Sound, ambient at Fire Island, LC ends]
[Archival Sound, Real VHSVCR intense distortion and interference VFX with sound (16_9 widescreen) [Free to use], Youtube ends]