Placing her research at the heart of the gradual erasure of ecosystems’ sensory worlds, Marylou Sharrock perceives in electronic media an enchanting power: a language that heightens our senses, sharpens listening, and opens onto finer perceptions and interactions. Seeking to understand and make tangible the complex networks of the living world, her work highlights correspondences between fragile ecosystems and the architectures of electronic interfaces. In particular, she modulates birdsong she has been archiving since 2018, using machines she designs, codes, and hand-solders. In 2020, she created Bird Translator, a synthesizer that transforms the human voice into a nightingale song.
Her practice unfolds on the threshold between a sensory experience and a tool for transmission, taking the form of immersive atmospheres in which the public can intervene. In 2020, Marylou conceived Jardin, an installation made up of a series of synthesizers replaying the acoustic repertoires of declining bird species in the Camargue. Visitors are invited to play these instruments, disrupt their balances, and compose, in real time, this restored soundscape.
Among her recent projects, Maison (2024), winner of the FoRTE 2024 award, is an immersive installation dedicated to the fragile soundscapes of the Misery marshes (Essonne), combining analog electronic circuits, a zine, and workshops. The project has been presented notably at FRAC Île-de-France and the Domaine de Montauger, in collaboration with the LPO and the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle de Paris. She is also developing Bestioles (2022), an evolving installation accompanied by workshops, awarded by the Centre Tignous, shaped by residencies in Brazil (Observatório de Aves da Mantiqueira), Peru, the Camargue (Tour du Valat x Fondation Luma), and Latvia (Ķemeri) with the French Institutes, and distributed through the Micro-Folies network with La Villette since 2025. Finally, with Harmonium (2023–2026), she is conducting research and underwater recordings initiated in Djibouti (with the Institut français), building a corpus and a reflection on sound reefs, their fragility, and their capacity for self-repair, in collaboration with the NGO BLOOM.
Marylou’s work has been recognized by several ecology-focused media outlets, notably the radio program La Terre au Carré on France Inter.
