Jonathan Uliel Saldanha

Libidinal Lake is a scenic installation and a vivarium for humans and sound, structured around the fluorescent, pulsating surface of a toxic lake. Conceived as a temporary zone, the work is inhabited by microscopic systems—bacteria, fungi, and other interdependent networks—that together form a larger organism. Within this environment, light, sound, and colour interact directly with the human body, producing a field of sensorial and perceptual entanglement.

The sonic dimension of Libidinal Lake is informed by synaesthetic approaches to sound and colour, drawing from Alexander Scriabin’s compositions for light organ, Olivier Messiaen’s coloured harmonies, the pulse-driven structures of South African qgom, and the acidic timbral language of psytrance. These influences are not quoted but metabolised through multichannel sound diffusion and electronically expanded instruments, generating a dense, stratified sound field that functions as the spectral body of the lake.

The lake itself is constructed from fluorescent materials, bioluminescent organisms, smoke and vapour, and a robotised lighting system, all operating as part of an artificial, self-regulating network. This network processes time-based information derived from lithium extraction and financial market fluctuations in real time. The data is interpreted through an artificial intelligence modelled on fungal behaviour: a computational organism that “feeds” on peaks of extraction—consuming them like sugar—and expands its structure within a three-dimensional, invisible mesh. This growth informs the electrical, luminous, and vibrational modulations of the installation, producing an environmental alterity that appears to emerge from a speculative future. Through an alchemical operation, invisible processes are rendered visible, and the temporal modulation of the lake’s surface becomes audible.

Libidinal Lake operates simultaneously as an enquiry and as a visual and sonic synthesis of interactions between humans and alterity. The lake functions as an interface where capital flows, biological intelligence, light vibration, and sonic synaesthesia converge. Visitors are invited to interact with the system’s behaviour, becoming temporarily embedded within its relational ecology—participating in its intelligence, its rhythms, and its evolving agency.

This work extends research developed in earlier scenic pieces and installations such as O Poço, a vertical acoustic exhumation machine activated by petroleum and human bodies; Vocoder & Camouflage, an installation composed of floral debris carcasses animated by sound and light within a lymphatic network; and Red Mercury, an oracular monodrama articulated through mineral and organic testimony.