Ice Voices
By Joan Sullivan and Robin Servant
September 26, 2025 to January 5, 2026. Open 10 am to 4 pm Thursday to Monday
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario.
Admission by Donation
Ice Voices is an interactive sound-photo installation by Joan Sullivan and Robin Servant that invites visitors to listen to what the disappearing ice is trying to tell us and to use their sense of touch and vision to explore further. Underwater recordings of ice “voices” play in the artwork which can be both fascinating and destabilizing. They pull listeners into their evocative vortex, coaxing them to listen more intently to the non-human world.
By Joan Sullivan and Robin Servant
September 26, 2025 to January 5, 2026. Open 10 am to 4 pm Thursday to Monday
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario.
Admission by Donation
Ice Voices is an interactive sound-photo installation by Joan Sullivan and Robin Servant that invites visitors to listen to what the disappearing ice is trying to tell us and to use their sense of touch and vision to explore further. Underwater recordings of ice “voices” play in the artwork which can be both fascinating and destabilizing. They pull listeners into their evocative vortex, coaxing them to listen more intently to the non-human world.
Joan Sullivan is a photographer, writer and artivist. Her climate change photographs oscillate between documentary and abstraction. Her current series of experimental photographs, JE SUIS FLEUVE, explores the fleeting nature of the disappearing ice on the Saint Lawrence River as a metaphor of impermanence in a rapidly changing world.
Robin Servant is a sound artist whose installation work and electroacoustic compositions are anchored in territorial soundscapes and the people who inhabit it. Convinced that listening to our sound environment creates empathy with it, he has listened to and documented many soundscapes in the Lower Saint Lawrence region for 20 years.
Borderline (Almaguin Highlands): Collective counter mapping through sonic geographies
By Jessica Thompson
Open 10 am to 4 pm Thursday to Monday.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
Pay by Donation
Borderline is a critical mapmaking project that uses sound to illuminate social and economic differences in local geographies. Visitors to the NAISA North Media Arts Centre are invited to contribute to a large-scale soundmap of the Almaguin Highlands by borrowing a toolkit to map sounds in one of the villages of their choice, or by using the Borderline mobile app. The sounds collected are added to the map on an ongoing basis.
The Borderline iOS app enables users to automatically map sounds in their environment, put them in dialogue with other forms of data, and generate interactive soundscapes by playing sounds back into the environment. Click here to download
By Jessica Thompson
Open 10 am to 4 pm Thursday to Monday.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
Pay by Donation
Borderline is a critical mapmaking project that uses sound to illuminate social and economic differences in local geographies. Visitors to the NAISA North Media Arts Centre are invited to contribute to a large-scale soundmap of the Almaguin Highlands by borrowing a toolkit to map sounds in one of the villages of their choice, or by using the Borderline mobile app. The sounds collected are added to the map on an ongoing basis.
The Borderline iOS app enables users to automatically map sounds in their environment, put them in dialogue with other forms of data, and generate interactive soundscapes by playing sounds back into the environment. Click here to download
The Sensation of Distribution
By Mitchell Akiyama and Brady Peters
Open 24/7 year round.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
By Mitchell Akiyama and Brady Peters
Open 24/7 year round.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
The Sensation of Distribution is a reprise of Mitchell Akiyama and Brady Peters’s 2019 work, The Distribution of Sensation, which they created while artists in residence at The Bentway, a large, urban public space situated under an elevated highway in downtown Toronto. The Distribution of Sensation was a sound sculpture composed of PVC pipes installed around The Bentway that invited visitors to listen through the natural resonance of the cylinders, creating a series of musical experiences across the site. Mimic the plumbing infrastructure of the site, the installation was meant to create aesthetic slippages that might potentially lead to confusion as to what exactly functioned or counted as art.
The re-installation of this work at NAISA blends the pipe sculptures into a more domestic vernacular. Mounted on NAISA’s exterior walls to impersonate furnace vents and erupting from the ground to suggest rogue plumbing gone awry, The Sensation of Distribution re-invites visitors to explore the unnoticed or imminent sonic and aesthetic potential of our built environment.
The re-installation of this work at NAISA blends the pipe sculptures into a more domestic vernacular. Mounted on NAISA’s exterior walls to impersonate furnace vents and erupting from the ground to suggest rogue plumbing gone awry, The Sensation of Distribution re-invites visitors to explore the unnoticed or imminent sonic and aesthetic potential of our built environment.
Voice of the Water by Eric Powell
Interactive Installation
By Eric Powell
Permanent Installation open Thursday to Monday, 10 am to 4 pm
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario.
Admission by Donation
Voice of the Water is an interactive rotary telephone-based listening station. Using sounds collected from inside the lakes and rivers around South River, Voice of the Water encourages listeners to connect with the local waterways as they explore the boundaries and overlaps between planes of existence. The Artist's goal is to create a venue for contemplation, catharsis, and a deeper engagement with the surrounding environment.
Interactive Installation
By Eric Powell
Permanent Installation open Thursday to Monday, 10 am to 4 pm
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario.
Admission by Donation
Voice of the Water is an interactive rotary telephone-based listening station. Using sounds collected from inside the lakes and rivers around South River, Voice of the Water encourages listeners to connect with the local waterways as they explore the boundaries and overlaps between planes of existence. The Artist's goal is to create a venue for contemplation, catharsis, and a deeper engagement with the surrounding environment.
Eric Powell is a sound artist, composer, teacher, and tinkerer. His practice brings together maps, interactive technologies, and field recording to create unique interfaces for exploring both rural and urban sound environments. His work invites users to listen in new ways, challenging them to rethink the role of sound in their daily lives. He is a founding member of several media arts organizations, and has served on the board for both the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology and the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. Eric regularly collaborates with other artists and academics, enabling him to share his work around the world.