Stinging Sounds

With nerve nets (a nervous system) located in epidermal tissue, jellyfish do not “hear” sound, but they touch and are touched by vibrations through their nerve rings (rhopalial lappets). Their bodies are touch-webs or nets of touch. Indeed, their bodies do not just have touch; they are touch. Jellyfish are living, respiring, metamorphosing tactile systems – their morphology – its diffuse nervous systems, its very structure and form – entails the touching system that it is.

                                     Pauline Oliveros

Pulsing, undulating, and touching jellyfish have found route into music – such as the searing, reverberating, polyvocal sounds of deep-listening crusader Pauline Oliveros’s Primordial Lift, a 1999 recording dedicated to jellyfish. The trance-like movements of medusea have shaped John Huling’s “Jelly Music” and “Lost Ocean,” compositions that waver, murmur and bubble, suggesting ceaseless flux, resonance, and immersion.  Andy Laster’s narrative jazz work “jellyfish,” which is cynical and mythological, offers some physical engagement with jellyfish. Composer Erik Satie’s lyrical comedy “The Sting of theJellyfish” and Yo La Tengo’s homage to filmmaker Jean Painlevé’s film “How Some Jellyfish Are Born” both play with the figural and the literal jellyfish.

Jelly Music

    

"How Some Jellyfish are Born"