RMS:
Shells are home to a variety of creatures.  They also act as protection for the soft bodied organisms which create them, protecting them from the vicissitudes of the sea.  When the animal dies, it leaves behind this relic of its life, which on occasion washes up onto a beach or is re-inhabited by another organism. Once the shell is vacant , it begins to lose its thingness, because its protective features are no longer relevant, and it begins down the path of object hood and of entropy. Once the shell is on a beach it can be slowly pulverized and eroded by the surf, buried by sand, or collected by a human. Its uniformity with other whelk shells make it a collectable object that often ignores the life of the animal which created it.     There is a common myth of holding a shell to one's ear so you can hear the ocean.  There is something quite mystical about the idea that by holding this object to your ear and having it transpose you to the place of its origin. Something I find disconcerting, is how often we try to structure and simulate nature through plastic palm trees and animal recordings. We try to bring back species the human race has destroyed, while their habitat along with the network of organisms that supported it are still in ruins or worse gone completely.     The sound element in this piece, is not the ocean, it is a recording of my voice. An inadequate substitute, which takes an object of supreme sublimity, the ocean, and robs it of its grandeur though a poor representation.











​