Stefanie Egedy’s work connects to a practice with roots in many ancient cultures: using sound for healing, meditation, and altered states of perception. Her instrument, however, is neither singing bowl nor voice, but the subwoofer. Typically a utilitarian device used to support other speakers, it is deployed here as a standalone instrument.

Subwoofers produce low-frequency sound between 20 and 150 hertz. These long wavelengths travel through space, objects, tissue, and bone, and are often felt more than heard. Egedy describes her compositions as “sub-bass massages” that take our bodies to sensorial places they have not been before and posits that the intense pressure of these vibrations creates a temporary disconnection from thought, a state she describes as a form of meditation or a “trip”.

The work unfolds in a ritualised environment, where we are invited to let our bodies surrender to the experience in a dimly lit room with large pillows. and succumb to the physical and sonic powers of the subwoofers-turned instrument. While the frequencies penetrate and shake up one’s tissue and bones, a certain liminality takes place: for the duration of the 20 minute composition, Egedy’s energetic transmission knows no before and no after, just a deep sense of surrender to a mental and physical presence mediated by vibration.