The Living Station (Marine Research and Monitoring Center)

Diana Policarpo\nMixed media drawings on Fabriano 200 gsm acid-free paper\n2026

Chlorella et Bacillus

Bernardo Gaeiras\n4-channel spatial sound installation\n2026

The multimedia installation Bugio Eco-Station – made out of two new works by Policarpo and Gaeiras – imagines a speculative future marine station at Bugio, Portugal, where the Tagus River meets the Atlantic Ocean. The project draws on the distant imaginary of the historic Bugio Lighthouse, which stands on a small estuary island about ten kilometres west of Lisbon, in order to construct a sonic infrastructure that transmits the ecological, physical, and social dynamics of this liminal territory, with particular attention to the invisible life forms, such as marine microorganisms and other imperceptible presences. Here, listening and observing become practices of attunement to invisible species and shifting territories.

Bugio Eco-Station unfolds through a constellation of drawings, a spatial sound composition, and lighthouse-inspired signals, proposing a space in which human and non-human worlds coexist, overlap, and transform within a continually changing aquatic landscape.

The spatial audio installation takes place in an inner chamber, where aquatic microorganisms make-with the marine station at Bugio. The installation stages a micro-ecological sonification of symbiosis, commensalism and competition of microorganisms, foregrounding their frequencies and vibrations. Often unnoticed, algae, bacteria and sediments sustain wider ecologies and actively co-compose the becoming of the marine station.

Next to this installation, which was developed during the Art & Science Residency A Call to the Sea, the artists also developed Bugio Radio Station – an experimental and speculative radio station for marine and atmospheric conservation and monitoring.