"Sadleriana Bavarica"
Autostereogram and sound installation, 2025
Background
In a park in the middle of Munich lives a small population of snails that is found nowhere else in the world. It is considered a remnant of the last ice age, whose glaciers left behind a small habitat for an even tinier population of snails.
Today, the 4mm small water snails find everything they need to survive next to Munich's busiest highway: A stream with stable temperatures and pebbles covered in a biofilm of green and diatom algae.
Due to its extremely limited range, the species is threatened with extinction by drought, although its population is stable and thriving in its tiny habitat.
Audio track
"Sadleriana Bavarica"'s audio track consists of field recordings and hydrophone experiments from the snail's habitat and its immediate sourroundings. In four movements it approaches the snails Umwelt from glacial deep time, via its urban environment until it retracts into the snails 3mm shell.
Autostereogram and sound installation, 2025
Background
In a park in the middle of Munich lives a small population of snails that is found nowhere else in the world. It is considered a remnant of the last ice age, whose glaciers left behind a small habitat for an even tinier population of snails.
Today, the 4mm small water snails find everything they need to survive next to Munich's busiest highway: A stream with stable temperatures and pebbles covered in a biofilm of green and diatom algae.
Due to its extremely limited range, the species is threatened with extinction by drought, although its population is stable and thriving in its tiny habitat.
Audio track
"Sadleriana Bavarica"'s audio track consists of field recordings and hydrophone experiments from the snail's habitat and its immediate sourroundings. In four movements it approaches the snails Umwelt from glacial deep time, via its urban environment until it retracts into the snails 3mm shell.
Autosterogram
Images of their inconspicuous habitat in a Munich park form the basis for an autostereogram in which the three-dimensional shape of the snail can be discovered.
The key to perceiving the 3D depth illusion in stereograms lies in the brain's ability to process information from both eyes and combine it into a single spatial image. With autostereograms, you have to focus your eyes so that they work independently of each other and perceive the patterns in the image as different depth levels.
