A project in development from 15 Feb to 15 May, 2025, during a residency at Het Lage Noorden in Friesland, kindly supported by the Mondriaan Fund. 

By translating tidal rhythms and cycles to live haptic, sensorial feedback on my body for several consecutive weeks, I will explore a type of ‘sensory augmentation’ training to see whether a human is able to develop a sensory perception of a non-human force, namely, the changing of the tides. With this project I intend to create and share a story which is locally embedded and at the same time part of a national and global discourse in which the climate crisis forces us to re-evaluate our entire relationship to non-human forces. The process and documentation will be shared here along the way so stay tuned!

(2025)

WHAT IS SENSORY SUBSTITUTION OR AUGMENTATION?

The concept of ‘sensory substitution’ – using one sensory modality, mainly haptics and touch, to gain environmental information to be used by another sensory modality, like vision or hearing – has existed for decades. Through haptic feedback on the skin, sensory impaired people are able to perceive auditory or visual information about their environment by interpreting the mapped haptic feedback patterns. This system consists of an environmental sensor, a coupling system, and a stimulator. The sensor records stimuli and gives them to a coupling system which interprets these signals and transmits them to a stimulator. One step further is to augment and extend the sensory perception of someone by introducing additional environmental information to their awareness, such as the tidal rhythm. In this system I plan to use tidal sensors, wireless data communication, and vibratory or electrical stimulation delivered by a wearable. Borrowing from this research of sensory substitution and augmentation, I will explore to what extent I am able to interpret and assign meaning to the signals created by environmental changes in the mudflats.

Right next to Het Lage Noorden lies a sea-dyke (a man-made hill designed to keep sea water at bay). Behind this barrier there is about 3km of Salt Marshes (or kwelders in Dutch) before you actually reach the sea.

This space forms part of the larger Wadden Sea, a UNESCO world heritage site that spans Germany, Holland, and Denmark. The Wadden Sea is the world's largest continuous system of sand and mud flats that are exposed at low tide. 

But so, basically I needed to be able to wirelessly sense the ocean tides, 3km away, and send it back to a device attached to my body at Het Lage Noorden....

This cute little device is designed for long range low power communication, ideal for my task. The only question is.. how far exactly could one of these communicate with another?? 

One thing I noticed is that the higher and less obstructed the device was, the stronger the signal. The Sea-Dyke by Het Lage Noorden actually made the perfect placement point to receive data from another device further out in the Salt Marshes! Also the tower that belongs to it serves as a great marker!

With one device sending messages from Het Lage Noorden, and one device in my jacket pocket, I set out to traverse the mud and snow to search for the limits of the communication range...

It was also -1 degrees today but luckily the devices (and me) survived the test!

Eventually, I had reached an end point where the sea water touched the salt marshes, both for me, and for my devices. The thick sinking mud risked me getting stuck and the signal, now almost exaclty 3km away, was beginning to weaken and lose connection. I felt like this was my boundary to work within. 

This sign reads: "Bird Breeding Grounds. Forbidden to enter from 15 March to 15 July" 

My residency period here is from 15 Feb - 15 May, meaning that for two of the 3 months I'll be here, a very large part of the area is closed off. This is a problem, especially if I want to send live tidal data to my body during the entire time of my stay here!! 

I contact the conservation org It Fryske Gea and ask if they could make an exception so that I can collect the devices at the end of the residency, or if they could collect the devices.
 

I leave the devices out there until the breeding season is over, and then I retrieve them with the risk that they are lost or broken. 
 

I find a location which is not closed off and try to send tidal data from there to here. 

Only the yellow dotted lines are open all year round. Everything else, including the route I would take to reach my sensors from Het Lage Noorden, is closed off during the breeding period...  

I realised this left me with several options:

After temperatures below -5 last night, I went back to my measurement point from the day before, only to find that the sea water had frozen!! A magical sight only few are lucky enough to witness..  

I decided to bike accross the dike, towards the area where the land touched directly with the WaddenZee. It was a moving experience, biking on the edge of this massive concrete hill which was protecting the land from the sea. Because on the other side were the most vast, expansive, and magnificent views of the tidal landscapes I was yet to see.

It was at this moment that I felt a sort of sadness somehow.. thinking that those who live on the other side of this man made barrier forfeited this magical view and direct contact with the sea and even the island accross from them. In exchange for security, they lost their direct engagememt with this powerful, ever-changing, beautiful force. They saw none of it anymore, and so, I could imagine, they probably also did not feel connected to it anymore... 

Today was the day to place my first device out in the wild! I had learned in the meantime that there is one dike very nearby that is actually open all year round, making this the only place I could access the ocean for the whole duration of my residency.

During the windy night, the batteries had died. When I went to see what had gone wrong, it was pretty obvious once I saw that the solar panel had moved during the night. Nonetheless the power issues persisted after I repositioned the panel as well... 

Another thing which was not working was the communication from the device in the mud to the device at Het Lage Noorden. Eventually after ordering MUCH larger antennas, this problem seemed to be fixed... partly.

For several consecutive days I walked the Wad to check up on my device. Although, after some time, I began to notice more and more the changes in the water and the surrounding environment on my walk to visit my device. Crazy masses of birds arriving, ice melting into clear water, turning into rusted slime, and then into black whirrling sandy waters -- each day was different. 

Although the device held up in the mud, wind and rain, it was frustrating because I was not getting the communication part right, meaning that the sensor data was being lost, and I wasn't able to record and analyse whether they could even work to show tidal rhythms.

I had been uploading the data to a google sheet which I could then use to graph the values of the 4 wetness sensors which I had placed at different heights by the waterside. As you can see from my graph, there is definitely some movement, but whether or not it is related to a tidal rhythm I can only know over a longer period of time. The communication and power problems were preventing me from this.

Bigger antenna, stronger solar panel, better case, and I added a temperature sensor next to the 4 wetness sensors! Fingers crossed...

In this little box down here I put one sensor and a SD card writer so that I could collect reliable data, even if the battery would die or the connection would be lost in the bigger device since I still need to actually know whether this sensor and this location can actually record the tidal rhythms!!  

My fellow artist in residence told me today that this slimy brown layer on top of the mud that appears when the sun comes out is actually little organisms called 'kiezelwieren' in Dutch, or diatoms in English. What is special about them besides the fact that they form an important part in the ecosystem, is that they respond to the tides! Apparently, even when they are removed from the environment and studied in the lab, they still respond to the tidal changes!!  

In the meantime lots of data was being collected.. sometimes.. However, after graphing these values, they were still so jumpy, and when compared to the tides it really didn't look like much... 

Another problem was that in the night the wifi would fall out, or because of the bad weather the device out in the mud would die. You can see the dotted lines as the parts where no data was collected

Obviously for the 'wetness' sensors when the tide would be high, the values it produced should be the lowest. Looking at this graph there is a little bit of correlation but hard to tell if its just wishful thinking...

Because of these inconsistent readings, I was very excited to see the data collected on my SD card reader which didn't rely on radio, wifi or solar power, just a regular old power bank that could run for around 3+ days. This is how I found it, 3 days later... 

Nevertheless we move on!! Even though the data wasn't consistent, it was at least still coming in some of the time -- so best to make use of that to start developing the feedback to the body! 

To keep it simple I started with using vibration motors to give the haptic feedback since it is by far the most accessible and easy to embed into a wearable for me or someone else to wear. I simply mapped the min, max, and current value of the wetness sensors to the max and min range of the vibration motors. Although it was hard to tell if it 'meant' anything, the fact that I knew these vibrations were coming from the mud made me excited. 

I replaced the motors for flat motors and stuck it to a neoprene headband(?) which had velcro on it making it easy to explore different body parts. From this short experience of wearing it for several hours in a row, I came to several conclusions: 

Part of the reason I applied for this residency was because I wanted to develop a work that had a direct relationship to a place. Working with the tides and their changes as well as with an ever changing environment asks of me to slow down, and be patient in the process. Testing equipment and sensors to know if they work takes hours or days! With many things in our lives we focus largely on things which give us instant gratification or which we can instantly recognise change in. The tide rushes for no one. 

SLOWING DOWN

After repositioning my sensors, and adding an even better solar power manager and battery charger, it seems my device can survive out in the wild and is giving consistent readings!! If you want to check out the (for now live) data, you can visit the google sheets link! Although it will only be active during this residency and even then I can't promise anything!

I had decided to reposition my sensors closer to the sea, since the readings that I was getting were still not really showing a clear rhythm. Since I placed the sensors when it was low tide, right on the line of the mud and water, I knew that when the tide came up, the sensors would be underwater.

Now that I had some clearer data, I started wondering if vibration motors was the right direction to head in with the feedback. To me they still didn't really relate to the moving of water, which is gradual, but unstoppable. I had also started thinking of using inflatables/air pressure, where a wearable device would slowly inflate when the tide was coming in, creating pressure on the body, and as the tide was retreating the body would experience the release of that pressure. Similar to how the dike or barriers would feel in relation to the water pressure. 

Nevertheless, before I totally jump ship from the vibration idea, I felt like I still had to actually give it a proper shot. Vibration motors are way more accessible for others to put on, and are way easier to embed in a wearable than an entire inflatable pump system. 

Each part of your body has a different sensitivity to touch. For example your hands and face are much more sensitive than the skin on your back. The more sensitive a body part, the closer you can place two separate vibration motors and still feel them as separate. You can think of this as the 'resolution' of that area of the body. 

Because the body is constantly adapting to changes in the environment, once the body has become used to the feeling of the vibration, you start to notice it less, even when the insensity has remained the same. Think about when you enter a cafe, and the smell of coffee is overwhelming. After sitting there for a while, you don't actively perceive the smell of coffee anymore. This is not because the smell has gone away, but rather that your brain has decided this environmental information is not new, and not a threat to you, so you do not need to focus on it. Of course if we noticed everything at the same intensity all the time, we would lose our minds! But it is a survival instinct which in some situations may make it harder to remain aware of certain sensory signals around us. 

A cortical homunculus is a distorted representation of the human body, based on a neurological "map" of the areas and portions of the human brain dedicated to processing motor functions, and/or sensory functions, for different parts of the body. - Wikipedia

This whole time I had still been struggling to collect the right data. But what was the 'right' data? The fact that I am trying to achieve the clean tidal ebb and flow, a clean, controlled curve, is perhaps the thing which is killing my inspiration and motivation. Since I could already look up this curve somewhere else online where scientists had just used the astronomy to predict the tides, even several days in advance, it also seemed like a fruitless mission to try to replicate what they were doing somehow. In reality I assumed that if I would just use a distance sensor and hang it under the bridge, I could clearly see the tide coming in and out. But was this what I wanted? Did it make sense? 

Today I spoke with a scientist from Rijkswaterstaat, which I had initially set up to ask about measuring and what to measure. He told me how even the scientists and biologists who are measuring the changes in the Waddenzee struggle to define it, and struggle to predict how it will behave in the future. In this field it is even more important to predict the future and define the behaviour in order to create certainty, make decisions and take action. He said there is a great fear for the future, with the rising sea levels. He told me that the rising sea levels only became dangerous once we started to build the dikes and try to keep the sea out. Before, the natural rhythms of the tides moving sediment would ensure it was deposited on the land, but now since the water has been kept out, the land inside the dike only sinks lower and lower, while the land outside keeps rising. The rising sea level is a problem because of what we as humans have built, not because it is inherently dangerous. In the past, natural cycles ensured land would stay where it should and water would move through it. The more you let go of control, the more this system works. You don’t need to control it, you just have to move with it. Find certainty in the uncertainty. 

I asked him which body part he thinks of first, when thinking about the Wad. He told me blood: arteries and veins. Similar to the vessels of our own body, the veins of the wad carry nutrients, dispose of waste, move through the body (of the land) and feed and support life. When you cut an artery off, that part of the body loses life — be it a body of land or a body of flesh. 

21:58 10/03 

Had been wearing it for a while now. What was funny was that after a while what I felt disappeared and only the sound remained. When I was alone it was totally different than when I was with other people. In a social setting I almost felt like a secret agent or something. Like I was not just me in the conversation but also the tidal data. For the others they almost didn’t notice it. At some point I got this crazy goosebump feeling all along my back. 

Funny that when I want to show people what I am wearing, they touch my vibrating belly as if I were carrying a child. I am thinking perhaps this process feels so funny because I usually always include others in the work, its usually never just me who wears the electronics.

11/03 9:00-21:00 

Been wearing the belt all day, and I can clearly notice a long period of quite-ness, and slowly I can notice that it is becoming more intense. Looking at the graph I’m right. But I wonder if without the graph it is the same experience.

Out of nowhere it started raining really hard — and a minute later, I felt this shift on my body. Then it rained hard again, and I felt it again. Although I could also see and hear the rain, it was kind of funny to also feel the rain, especially since it was such a short and powerful rainfall. 

Around the evening I really started feeling the tide coming in, or at least a sort of rise in frequency — as I was working on some other things, I suddenly had more energy and got really into a flow. I continued working longer that night than usual, and when it was time for bed I was exhausted. I wanted to try and sleep with my belt on but at the same time I was actually very tired and wanted a break/silence while I slept. Maybe tomorrow I can give it a shot. 

12/03 21:00-01:00

Tonight I was going to sleep with the belt on. When the time came to go to sleep, I realised it felt strange to take my cloths off, and to keep the belt on. Lying naked in the bed I became aware of the softness of the mattress holding my weight. Finding a comfortable position I lay down and closed my eyes.

Removing all other senses for the first time gave me the most moving and intricate experience of the tides yet. The sound of the motors resonated through the bed and through my body. It felt in some ways like being underwater or floating in an air bubble deep under the sea. I could sense every micro-movement, shift, and change of the motors (and of course the water it was representing). Even my breathing seemed to engage in a sort of dialogue with the vibrations.

I don’t know if it was because of the full moon shining into my room, or the belt, or something else, but after an hour or so of listening and lying there with my eyes closed, my body was still entirely wide awake. After another half an hour, I realised my body was anxious, my heart was beating loudly, and I decided to take off the belt. It took me another 30 minutes to calm down and relax enough to finally fall into a slumber. 

 Is it something I need to push through, and allow the tides to influence my sleeping patterns? Maybe it should disrupt my whole rhythm. After all, my project is seeing to what extent the natural rhythms influence human cycles...

But at the same time I felt like I was already feeling the tides when I felt the moon, and I already moved with it in my humanly ways. I don’t need to directly move with the ebb and flow in order to move with the tides, do I? Is it perhaps simply the translation of the water into a motor’s movement which makes the whole experience unpleasant? High tide should not be something that prevents sleep and causes anxiety in the body — feeling and moving with the tides should not feel like a punishment or a burden.

Although the sea and the tides are immensely powerful and dynamic, the water is at the same time more often than not a gentle, slow moving constant. The awareness of it should feel like a companionship, a relationship. How do I move forwards from this?