With the ongoing series VOLUME, hand-built ceramic whistles are animated by programmed pneumatic pumps that push air through each earthen form, composing a rhythm that marks time and reveals a hidden code. By mechanizing the breath that activates the whistles—and, at times, extending the exhalation beyond human capacity—the work invites us to reflect on our humanity. We are fragile animals, part of this earth, and made of it.

The transformation of clay into ceramic is a timeless record of humanity. The clay whistle embodies a global ancestral lineage of human ingenuity. The globular whistle—one of the earliest forms of ceramic instruments—has been created across cultures for thousands of years. It splits breath into vibration, activating not only the object but the space around it.

Art is inherently participatory—the audience, knowingly or not, completes the work. Each encounter with VOLUME becomes part of its unfolding, each mechanically forced breath through the whistles a record in the shared precarity of our existence. To some, it will be an alarm or warning; to others, a sonic tool for way-finding; and to others still, a source of ecstatic joy.

This ceramic sound work engages directly with the continuum of time. The installation transcends linear time by drawing on ancestral knowledge and technologies, tracing the transformation of riverside clay into vessel, whistle, sound, communication, and ultimately, art. These clay forms carry stories of our collective future, deeply rooted in ancestral wisdom.