E05 - Mariana Pinto Coelho Dias, “Resonances of an Unheard Body”

Mariana Pinto Coelho Dias (Portugal)
“Resonances of an Unheard Body” (2025)

Through sound, bodies expand beyond their visible contours. Following this line of thought, we can say that the “voice” is an extension of our body. This reflection leads us to question the limits of the extension of a human body: how far does a body extend? Who and what are part of it? What are the layers of its existence? Using the principles of Acoustic Ecology, and considering the human body as an undiscovered soundscape, the piece “Resonances of an Unheard Body” aims to highlight the relevance of 'sound' and 'listening' in perceiving the invisible layers of our existence. The aim is to question the conventional limits of the human body, making it collective, interconnected and permeable to others and to the sound environment that surrounds it. In the same way, this work investigates the relationship between the body and technological devices for capturing sound, as a fundamental factor in expanding our perception of the world. Technology is the resource that allows us to discover and navigate through all the layers of a body’s existence, combining and balancing them. Through it we can realize that, even though we are apparently nowhere, we can be everywhere our body extends. A body that has a plastic structure and behaves like water, changing its shape and adapting to the conditions that nature provides. 

Mariana Pinto Coelho Dias
is a Portuguese transdisciplinary artist, with artistic work in the field of sound art, experimental video, performance art, and audio-visual installation. Focused on sound studies, more specifically in the Acoustic Ecology, her work is prompted by the desire to contribute to balancing the weight between “sound images” and “visual images” in our perception of the world. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Fine Arts in Lisbon (FBA-UL), a research fellow from The Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), and a member of The Artistic Studies Reseach Center (CIEBA). Exploring the practices of videoperformance and soundscape composition, she is developing an artistic research project entitled “Anthropophony: listening to the soundscape of an ‘expanded (human) body’ through videoperformance practices’”, which seeks the possibility of a consistent engagement between “visual” and “sound images” for the perception of an “expanded (human) body”.