︎ .WAVE
They say you can hear the ocean in a seashell. That was the first thing my Baka said when she handed me this conch from Podgora, Croatia. When I visited Podgora a few years ago, I heard the ocean. I heard the crashing of waves against the pebble beach.
While “seashell resonance” may be a folk myth, I hold onto this idea, well into adulthood, that a seashell connects me to the same waves my grandmother swam in as a child.
I ran a Python script to convert a .WAV audio file of the crashing waves on the beach in Podgora to binary code. I painted each zero and one on the inside of the conch until there was no space left.
Whether or not you, too, can hear the ocean in a seashell, I think there’s value in holding onto these experiences even when they shift form.
Videos here.