WHERE SIGNALS FAIL looks at the damage to Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins' (Sousa chinensis) hearing, caused by land reclamation and human engineering activities associated with Double Happiness Island: China’s first offshore artificial island. Located in the Zhangzhou Development Zone of Fujian Province, the ecosystem is also subject to noise pollution generated by subsequent maritime traffic.

The project attempts to translate the dolphins’ feelings during this process into feelings that can be understood by the human sensory system, via empathy. Sound becomes a medium of memory. Through the reinterpretation of this sound, the artwork stages the profound ecological trauma that human behaviour causes for other species.

To simulate the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins sensory experience, the sound installation is divided into two key frequency sections. The first section is white noise, symbolising the acoustic masking of the dolphins’ communication frequency band by continuous background noise from ships and other sources. The second section consists of irregular, harsh, and unstable high frequency sounds that simulate the auditory damage dolphins experience under impulsive underwater noise (such as pile driving). Together these sounds induce temporary physical discomfort for humans, allowing the audience to experience the “acoustic pressure” suffered by the dolphins.