Two installations featuring membranes that contract and expand, evoking human and non-human folds. The starting point for this collaborative artistic project is an exploration of the “somatics of the fold”, from Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical stratifications of matter and his ideas of folded time and bodies, through the anatomy of skin surfaces and intestinal walls, to the haptic qualities of contracting robots in the field of soft robotics. In vocal fold tension mismatch, the fold becomes a fleeting pattern of uneven tension that you can experience physically.

vocal fold tension mismatch 1
In the display case, a latex skin performs an autonomous choreography of folding. The membrane expands until it touches the glass, crumpling and curving into complex patterns upon contact. The resistance of the outer boundary gives rise to the folding, which here becomes the existential condition of every movement.

vocal fold tension mismatch 2
On a historic bed in the historical ward, a latex sheet folds and unfolds like living tissue, inviting you to experience folding through touch. The bed becomes a site of sound where past and present, the human and the non-human, come into contact and fold into one another.

The movement of the latex surface and the sound form a feedback loop: the folding process alters the sound, which in turn triggers the movement of the surface. In the crumpled landscapes of the latex skin, the sound, which morphs in real time, and the movement logic of soft robotics intertwine.

The resulting vibrations are transmitted to the body via chin rests mounted on stools. When you lean forward and place your chin on the rest, you hear the sound not through the ear, but through bone conduction: the vibrations travel through the jaw and skull to the cochlea, the spiral-shaped structure in the inner ear. The folding is heard from within. The whisper of a skin-like surface thus becomes physically perceptible.

vocal fold tension mismatch invites you to listen to the folding of the skin from within.

Text by sikau/pubalova
sikau/pubalova is an artistic duo comprising artist, researcher and creative coder Denisa Půbalová and media artist, mezzo-soprano, musicologist and curator Lea Luka Sikau.