Underwater Extraction as Spatial Curation: Sonic Archaeology, Media Inscription, and the Re-Voicing of Submerged Histories

Abstract This article presents an underwater sound-art project based on the wreck of the Guang Bing, an ironclad ship from the late Qing era that sank in 1895. Developed in collaboration with underwater archaeologists, the project reframes extraction as spatial curation, deploying hydrophones, sonar transducers, impulse responses, and recursive feedback as curatorial and compositional agents. Fieldwork articulated a typology of traces—ritual or communal, industrial or mechanical, natural or environmental, infrastructural or labor—where spectral roll-off, breath cycles, and dampened instrumentality became structural parameters, and the ocean itself operated as collaborator. Transformation re-voiced these fragments as compositional logics. Colonial anthems were recomposed and re-coded: one rendered as fractured ensemble textures, another translated into high-frequency sonar residues, while the “Sea-going Song” foregrounded vernacular endurance through spectral processing. Improvisation with live hydrophone inputs and mixed-reality avatars consolidated instability, collaboration, and haunting persistence as aesthetic strategies. Dissemination staged these materials across a multichannel installation, a mixed-reality ensemble, and sculptural sonar devices, producing a historiographic simulation in which memory circulates through convergence and dispersal rather than intact preservation. The project advances sonic heritage and computer music by demonstrating recording as inscription, dramaturgy, and epistemic method, reactivating submerged histories through contemporary listening.