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Cernentia: exploring the visual perception of lungfishes without eyes

Audrey Appudurai's graduating exhibition will be the first PhD show from SymbioticA's academic programme .

Audiences are invited to experience the visual world of a group of Australian lungfishes born without external eyes.

By using scientific methodologies and artistic practice, Appudurai has created a kaleidoscopic interface built from scientific and artistic traces that poetically extends human perception beyond vision, and highlights the limitations that prevent us from complete embodiment. The creation of a link between human-and-lungfish and human-and-“eyeless”-lungfish connects us with the world under threat due to human impact, and in doing so, may help us to understand our place within it.

Audrey Appudurai is an Australian artist and researcher interested in the scientific, artistic, and cultural pursuit of non-human animal experiences. Through scientific research and the use of biologically related technologies (histology, electrophysiology, and microscopy), and sound, video, and photography, Appudurai creates immersive multi-media installations that integrate the fields of biological sciences and the arts to speculate on a perceptive world outside our own.
Appudurai graduated with honours from The University of Western Australia, Faculty of Science with a BSc (Microbiology and Medical Genetics majors), and currently is a PhD candidate at SymbioticA and the Neuroecology Group at The University of Western Australia.

She is exploring the visual perception of lungfishes, living fossils capable of breathing through air and water, and linked to humans by being the closest living ancestor to all land vertebrates. By utilizing diverse (and often opposing) disciplines and methodologies, Appudurai hopes to provide a deeper understanding of the visual systems of non-human aquatic animals in order to better grasp the intangible nature of visual experience.

Cernentia: exploring the visual perception of lungfishes without eyes runs from the 24th-31st July 2015 at Kidogo Arts Institute in Fremantle.

Media references

Chris Cobilis 61 8 6488 5583 [email protected]