VOYAGERS / DIS-ORIENTATION
The Bosphorus is known as the dividing line – of Europe from Asia, the occidental from the oriental, a boundary water. When voyagers
seek to orient themselves, it is thus a gesture of both spatial and cultural self-centering, a geographic conceit upon an earthly stage.
The heavens above? For ancient seafarers they were waypoints for our surface travels first and foremost, the stars a canopy for
our ego-geo-centricity.
‘Bosphorus’ comes from the Greek Βόσπορος, meaning ‘passage of the ox.’ According to Ovid and Aeschylus, it is here that
the mythological priestess, Io, crossed during years of wandering after being transformed into an ox by the god, Jupiter.
Seeking refuge from assault, imprisonment, and torture, Io’s voyages of desperate migration and crossing were
very much of this world. But Io’s story is other-worldly as well, in fact astronomical.
Io is also a celestial being: Galileo discovered her in orbit of the planet Jupiter, the first moon described beyond our Earth’s own
lunar companion. Io’s revolutions were revolutionary – crucial evidence to disprove the immemorial claim that the Earth was
the centre of the universe. By confirming Copernicus’s heliocentric theory Io’s extra-terrestrial existence overturned our
fictional privilege on an astronomical scale and helped reveal a fundamentally new understanding of physics: location and motion
is not fixed, but always relative to the observer. Put forth in A Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632),
Galileo was found guilty of heresy and sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life, his treatise banned by the
Church for the next two hundred years. Upon his forced recantation Galileo is said to have whispered under his breath:
‘and yet it still moves!’ The Earth is its own perpetual voyage.
By dismantling our fixation with definitive location, Galileo’s Dialogue completely dis-orientated us. Through Io we see that the
Bosphorus is not a location but a trans-location of dopplegänger entanglement by way of space, time, and history concerning
a myriad of world systems. Io crossed the Bosphorus, but now there is also a ‘Bosphorus Regio’ that crosses Io the moon.
She extends an invitation for us to expand beyond our earthbound point of view. From the depth of this strait’s waters
we can connect the nautical to the astro-nautical, the roof of the Greek School in Istanbul is our observatory.
SIGNAL / NOISE
Baltic Galaxy, Taurus Sun, Moscow Stars, Estrella, Vega Voyager... celestial monikers of just a few of the 130 vessels that pass through
the Bosphorus every day, the second busiest shipping lane on the planet. But the strait’s voyagers also include bottlenose dolphins
(Tursiops truncatus), common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) and harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena). Marine biologists
call these indigenous travellers the “street children” of the Bosphorus given their daily struggle to swim among the traffic.
Their echolocating language of clicks and squeaks vibrate through the water only to be drowned out by the engine noise
ships in perpetual procession. As an aqueous realm where seeing is by sounding, the Bosphorus is cacophonous,
a passage of disharmony for creatures within a world that we are increasingly unwilling to share.
NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe passed Io in 1979. A metal dish flying through the void, Voyager 1 heard the electrodynamic tumult
between Io and Jupiter borne from the confluence of gravitational pull, magnetic fields, and plasma currents. Through them, the
volcanic Io induces massive lightning storms on Jupiter’s poles (meteorological revenge for mythic wrongs). As Voyager 1 listened
to the charged currents’ whistling crackles, its own metal body was rattled by the electromagnetic vagaries rippling through space,
turning the probe into a vessel of both signal and feedback, all dutifully recorded by its own sensors. Like a dolphin in the noisy
darkness trying to discern something from everything else or a cymbal constantly ringing, Voyager 1 continues on. Now
it is a message in a bottle – the only human-made object to leave our solar system, carrying a gold-plated disc called
‘Sounds of the Earth’ with five hours of signal: whale song, waves breaking, the music of Mozart and Chuck Berry.
THINGS CYMBALIC
Back on the ground we fashion other contrivances for both listening and cacophony alike. The relic radar dish on Riva Beach at the mouth
of the Black Sea tuned in for the fugitive rumbles of threats on the horizon, or encrypted beeps and pings. Alternatively, you can make
sure they know you are coming, like the Ottoman military marching bands – mehter bölüğü – did in the 13th century. Their processions’
hallmark crashing sound was that of the cymbal, a bronze disc-dish of sonic shimmer. Both senders and receivers, cymbals endure
as sound on the move, a legacy of wave-making crafted along the strait.
This is a natural history of the Bosphorus, a cosmo-nautical observatory of resonance: Watercolours of Io painted with the strait’s own water;
crosscurrents of Voyager 1 remixed with the ecological acoustics of Istanbul’s dolphins and ships. Here is a room full of symbols and
cymbals, of semiotic signs and reference as well as pure, unmediated noise. Take the opportunity to double-up on the clamour
of life or find a new signal in the Endless Reverberation. Shake, whistle, hum, everything seeks to be heard.