Eels

porcelain, lace, voice-activated fiberoptic lighting

Eels is a reactive sculpture made of slip-cast ceramic eels embedded with fiber optic thread. When a nearby voice or ambient sound is detected, light pulses silently through the forms—animating them in sudden, twitching flickers. The reaction is not expressive, but instinctive.

The work explores the threshold between presence and response. The eels don’t understand the sounds that activate them, but they react all the same—like nerves without a brain, like bodies tuned for something else. It’s a feedback loop without interpretation: a system that listens only to prove it can hear.