“Our practices meet in an interest in the quiet, often overlooked signals of place and the ways environments construct emotional experience.”

Inhabiting a metropolis renowned for its frenetic pace and cultural multitudes, the London-based duo- XinYue Ma & Alexander Collinson - recreate what most of us know all too well but seem to forget. In works such as InterTidal 2025 and 51.14° N, 1.38° E, the collective acknowledges the profound connection that materials have with place and memory. By bringing nature into a gallery setting through sound installations and sculptures, audiences can unconsciously reconnect with the profound sights and tones that reside in nature.

In their seminal work, Intertidal 2025, the collective takes a particular approach to art making: one of collaboration and improvisation. The work reflects the curiosity of two individuals and embodies their experiences within a coastal area. Through sound recordings and a sculpture, which the collective referred to as a "living artefact” - carrying physical traces of every encounter - this installation reminds us of tide as a methodology. By positioning their creative process and work on improvisational, site-responsive methods, they scribble a dialogue with the site itself, which in turn, argues that collaboration with the site: its territorial particularities; the way sounds resonate differently against coastal architectures; and how seaweeds and sand become one with the sculptures- is a way of ecological entanglement that touches a primordial need and connection we have with the natural environment.

Their body of work embodies a unique framework rooted in multiple lineages of contemporary movement and artists. Their walking-based methodology specifically echoes land art pioneers, such as Richard Long and Robert Smithson, particularly through sound documentation of their engagement with coastal sites, and by positioning landscape and material themselves as active agents and collaborators, rather than mere passive materials. Theoretically, their engagement with New Materialism and posthuman thought positions the sea as a co-composer, allowing waves to determine sonic structures, creating what Jane Bennett terms "vibrant matter". Collectively, their media choice, theoretical frameworks, and creative process indubitably create an artistic experience that may be called narrative environments—spaces where story emerges through sensory immersion rather than linear telling.

What distinguishes their practice in relation to other contemporary artists is their particular focus on shortening the gap between coastal environments and dense urban contexts through what they term "intentional encounters." They approach this methodology not only through their artistic practices but also through their curatorial works. Their platform, Elephant Vision Lab, acts as both conductor and creator. Through it, they support emerging experimental practices by staging exhibitions in London and Paris—not only nurturing artists working in new media but also offering what audiences describe as “moments of slowing down”. Through Elephant Vision Lab, their curatorial approach, including the exhibition Soft Ground, extends their practice reach, offering professional gallery contexts with technical and curatorial support.

As those living in urban areas become increasingly estranged from natural rhythms and our ecological futures grow uncertain, Ma and Collinson create spaces that ask: how can we have an embodied connection with nature and place when disconnection seems inevitable? Their answer—notice, listen, respond—is both methodology and manifesto.

Can you start by giving us an overview of your individual practices? What conceptual and visual frameworks encompass your body of work? 

 XinYue Ma:

My practice moves between ceramics, sculpture and site-based installation, a lot of it really begins with tactile attention, textures, rhythms, those quiet signals within everyday environments that often go unnoticed. I come from a background in theatre set design, and I think that shapes everything I do. I’m always thinking spatially, how bodies move through a space, how materials guide behaviour, how light or sound can completely transform an atmosphere. 

I’m currently based in London, working across sculpture, installation and interdisciplinary materials. I tend to treat space as a kind of intimate immensity, a place where form, movement, and material converge in ways that invite people to feel rather than simply observe. My installations often combine sculpture, sound,  and moving image, blurring the boundaries between perception and embodiment.

I’m interested in how a space can shift the way we register our own bodies. 

My passion for freediving also threads its way into the work. Underwater, you register motion differently,  through pressure, rhythm, breath. There’s a heightened sensitivity, a kind of suspended awareness. Those sensations often reappear in the forms I build, which tend to hover somewhere between organic memory and speculative futures. 

I like to think of my practice as a way of shaping experiences that are both physical and atmospheric,  immersive environments where the body, the material, and the space are all in conversation 

Alexander Collinson:

I’d say my practice really sits at the intersection of sound design, narrative environments, and moving image. As an audiovisual artist, I’ve always been drawn to the ways sound can hold history and place, how a rhythm, a resonant tone, or even a fragment of a field recording can carry the feeling of a landscape or a memory. For me, sound isn’t just an element within a piece; it’s a way of understanding the world we are in.  

A lot of my work has focus on exploring how sensory environments shape emotion and memory. Blending sound design with visual storytelling and spatial practice allows me to create experiences that don’t just describe a place or a story but immerse people in it. I often think of the works I create as artefacts, objects that document a relationship with the world, between nature and human intervention, rather than straightforward representations. 

My background feeds into this; I hold an MA in Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins and a  BA in Sound Design, and that combination really shaped how I think about space, story, and sensory perception. Over the years, I’ve worked on immersive projects for museums and galleries across Europe,  including Memoirs of the Blitz and soundtracking the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. 

Together, our collaboration sits within a shared conceptual framework of sensory perception, material agency, and spatial storytelling. Blending sound, narrative environments, sculpture, and installation, we explore how atmosphere shapes memory and how bodies attune to subtle cues, rhythm, texture, and resonance. 

Our practices meet in an interest in the quiet, often overlooked signals of place and the ways environments construct emotional experience. Working as a duo allows us to merge acoustic and material thinking, creating hybrid installations that question boundaries between perception and embodiment.  Ultimately, we aim to craft spaces where sensory experience becomes a form of inquiry and reflection. 

Your collaboration began in the summer of 2024. What led to forming this collective, and how have your individual practices evolved through it? 

The collaboration began almost accidentally, a reflection of our collective. Just two people walking,  exchanging observations, talking about our interests, this led to shaping a ceramic sound sculpture without expecting it to become anything more. Some time passed, and then something clicked. The rhythm of our ideas aligned, and improvisation became a method. One of us made a gesture, the other echoed or expanded it. That early sculpture became Intertidal, and without planning it, a duo emerged. 

Working together has stretched our individual practices. 

For XinYue, sound and digital media became integral, shifting her sculptural work toward new forms of perception. 

For Alexander, working with physical materials and the presence of clay, stone, and found objects reshaped how he approached sound, less as a technical form, now more as a tactile one. 

We often say the collective formed not through intention, but through momentum, a desire to experiment and explore. Collaboration has become a way of thinking. 

Given that your process is rooted in lived experiences and improvisation, how do you typically approach a project? Has visiting a site ever changed its direction? 

We usually begin by walking. No plan, no goal, just letting the environment interrupt us, speak to us. We have a camera and a sound recorder to hand, sometimes other materials ready to capture when the time feels right, when the environment speaks to us, if that be through natural elements or human intervention of a space. It will be through those interruptions that ideas enter; the environment around is always giving.  

For Intertidal, taking the ceramic structure to the shoreline fundamentally shifted the piece. The sea became a collaborator, determining rhythm and duration, letting the waves immerse the sculpture into the natural landscape and dictate the pace of the soundscape, which would eventually accompany the work.  

Echo of echo, is an example of letting the environment around speak to us and help shape what the work would become, Xinyue had made a series of repetitive faces which, overtime distorted with each iteration,  like sound an echo of an echo overtime changes will still present in some form, it was not until walking through the city streets and through parks we began to reflect upon the echoing nature of voices and people around, this form the basis of the soundscape the would accompany the work using voices blended with the sound of the city and a repetitive piano, echoing the pace of city life. While working through parks,  the structural elements of the trees act as a container and barrier to life inside and outside of the green spaces, leading to the use of a 3 meter long sculptural suspended tree, fused together with melted metal to which the faces then hang, a reflection of our journey through the park and city streets combining sound,  found and natural materials. 

Our approach relies on site encounters such as these because it destabilises certainty. It makes space for things we could not have anticipated in a studio environment and instead lets the world around us play a key role as a collaborator to the works we create.  

Your works draw inspiration from coastal environments. What attracts you to these landscapes? 

Coastal landscapes are transitional zones, always shifting, always negotiating between stability and erosion, presence and disappearance. That sense of impermanence resonates deeply with our practice. These environments also hold personal meaning: 

For XinYue, the ocean is a place of embodied knowledge, shaped by freediving and its rhythms of descent and ascent. 

For Alexander, the coast is a sonic archive, full of resonances that speak of histories, labour, and movement; it is also a space to find peace and space to think and reflect.  

Coastal sites remind us that landscapes are not static scenery but living presences. They hold memory,  rhythm and time in ways that continually draw us back. It is also the unknown that intrigues us, the idea that much of the ocean is yet to be explored, the secrets it holds, something all so fascinating.  

It is those interactions with coastal sites that drive our work forwards, there’s always more to learn, to see, and experience; it gives and takes with each tidal movement.  

Intertidal 2025 explored the conversation between site and digital space. What are the conceptual frameworks of this project? 

Intertidal 2025 is grounded in a conceptual framework that moves between materiality, movement, and ecological speculation. The project originally began as a ceramic sound sculpture intended to hold the resonance of the sea, similar to the way a shell becomes a vessel for imagined oceanic sound. But as the work developed, it expanded into a reflection on ecological futures, digital artefacts, and the widening disconnection between coastal environments and urban cities. 

The theoretical foundations of the project draw on several overlapping frameworks, new materialism,  posthuman perspectives, and media archaeology. Together, these approaches helped us think about the sea, objects, and digital media not as passive elements but as active agents shaping experience and narrative. 

1. The Sea as Collaborator 

This idea stems from posthuman and new materialist thinking, where agency is distributed across human and non-human forces. By letting the waves determine rhythm, motion, and duration, the sea is positioned not as a subject to be represented but as a co-composer. The soundtrack emerges from the sea’s own gestures, waves striking the sculpture and stones around, reflecting the bell-like chimes that reflect an entanglement of natural movement and artistic intention. 

2. The Digital Artefact as Memory 

Drawing from media archaeology and theories of digital materiality, the work considers documentation not as secondary but as a form of memory-making. Video recordings of waves breaking against objects become temporal fragments, micro-archives that are later reassembled using audio-visual equipment. In the gallery, these fragments function as digital artefacts; they suspend time, translating site-based events into a mediated memory. 

3. Speculative Ecology 

The narrative dimension of Intertidal engages with speculative ecological thinking, imagining futures where organic and digital forms of knowledge merge. In this framework, the ocean is not only an environment but a storyteller, an entity that records, transmits, and shapes histories. The work asks what ecological archives might look like when nature itself becomes a technological narrator, and how we might rethink environmental futures through hybrid forms of sensing and storytelling. 

In essence, Intertidal 2025 reflects on our wider practice, listening closely, observing carefully, and building environments where natural rhythms, light, and sound can speak. It proposes a model of art making where site, material, and technology form a shared ecology. One that invites audiences to reconsider their relationship to place, memory, and the more-than-human world. 

Intertidal 2025 moves between material, movement and speculation. In essence, Intertidal encapsulates what our collective is about: listening, observing, and creating spaces where environments speak through sound, light and rhythm. 

You described this artwork as an artefact that began merging with its environment. Can you expand on that? 

When taking the sculpture to the shoreline, it began absorbing the environment around it: the salt, water,  impact, and time. In that moment, it became a site of material memory, carrying the traces of every touch and encounter, its surface storing the rhythms and pressures of place. It no longer felt like an object we made, but something shaped by the notion of the sea itself. Its surface changed with every wave. As a work shaped through situated making, it formed a dialogue with the shoreline, becoming inseparable from the conditions and environment that transformed it. It became less a finished artwork and more a living artefact, something touched and reshaped by its surroundings. 

Still to this day, there are stones trapped inside the sculpture, placed there by the sea, seaweed attached upon the outer and inner surfaces, and sand that falls each time it’s transported. It has become a living memory of that moment in time, one that can now be shared for others to encounter in a totally different environment from the one it came from. 

Calling it an artefact also reflects our interest in how digital fragments, videos, sounds, and images all become records of a moment. Together with the physical sculpture and its digital traces, the works form a hybrid object: part environment, part memory. 

Your project 51.14° N, 1.38° E draws from the White Cliffs of Dover. What conceptual and visual nuances shape this work? 

For 51.14° N, 1.38° E, standing beneath the White Cliffs of Dover and witnessing the constant departure and return of vessels shaped the project into a narrative about thresholds, one of migration, memory, and movement. We went with the idea of capturing something there; we had spoken about the place being of interest. Dover is one of those places that holds history and narratives, a place that, for many, signifies an arrival in England. However, we never know what it would give back to us once we were there. 

Visually, we draw from the chalk cliffs, the bright white that acts as a beacon across the sea, the vertical nature of its form, while noting the acts of erosion caused by the sea. The constant movement of ships,  arriving and departing, the tannoy of the port echoing across the landscape and the sound of the ships bellowing their horn. While understanding the tension between vastness poised against fragility. Large ships and small boats, natural forms against human intervention.  

The weather dictated the sound we recorded; the day was windy, with metal rattles and high-pitched whistles through metal interventions within the landscape. The momentum of waves rising and falling against the shoreline created its own unique soundscape against the rocks that, over time, have fallen from the cliff edge. Those sounds, those visual cues shape the work we create.  

Conceptually, the work explores migration and transition, both human and geological, erosion as narrative, where the cliffs slowly rewrite themselves over time, a singular found rock with a naturally formed hole takes centre place in the installation, a reminder that even hard material over time can degrade and reshape through natural processes. The idea of edges, literal and metaphorical, with the motion of crossing,  captured through sound, and a tape cassette that bridges the gap between human technology and natural found material. The cassette tape for us conceptually reflects the motion of time, movement and fragility,  suspended between opposite forms, degrading overtime with each iteration and movement brushing against a stone.  

We want the work to hold the weight of the site while remaining intimate, something that communicates the emotional pulse of standing on that edge. 

You aim to bring natural environments into urban spaces through immersive installations. How have audiences responded so far? 

The response has often been one of an emotional connection. Audiences describe feeling transported or unexpectedly calmed. When exhibiting in dense city environments such as London or Paris, viewers frequently say the work gave them a moment of slowing down, a space to breathe, to listen, to reconnect with rhythms usually drowned out by urban life. 

Many audiences also express a sense of recognition, even if they’ve never visited the sites we reference.  They recognise the movement of water, the cadence of the tide, the feeling of standing at the edge of something. The installations seem to awaken embodied memories, and in essence, that’s what we want to achieve: to bring the feeling of nature and environment to those who are unable or less able to reach it.  

Can you tell us more about the Elephant Vision Lab and its role in your work? 

Elephant Vision Lab is a creative platform focused on emerging artistic research and experimental practices. For us, it functions both as a support system and a testing ground. It offers space for dialogue,  critique and production, allowing us to refine ideas, prototype installations and engage with a community invested in interdisciplinary approaches. 

The Lab encourages risk-taking and exploration, which is essential for the improvisational and site-responsive nature of our work. 

It also looks to support other artists through open calls, giving those with less experience of exhibiting art a chance to show their works in professional gallery environments while accessing curatorial and technical support from us. Our first curated exhibition, Soft Ground, opens mid-December at The Annex by the Koppel  Project in central London, and we are extremely excited to see what the future brings in that regard.  

How do you see artistic practices contributing to sustainability and social consciousness today? 

We see art as a powerful way to slow people down. In a fast-paced world of constant scrolling and clicking, we often encounter nature only through screens; we imagine it, but rarely reach it. Technology,  while connecting us, has also become a barrier to our direct experience of the environment. Artistic practice can counter this disconnection. 

In our own work, we create pieces that speak to the digital reality we live in while gently reminding audiences that nature still exists beyond the screen. By bringing physical, found objects from one environment into another, we create intentional encounters with nature inside gallery spaces, often located in dense urban settings. These interactions invite calm, presence, and a renewed sense of connection for those who stumble upon them. There is a certain irony in watching visitors photograph these installations,  capturing screens that are themselves referencing the natural world, an inception-like loop that reveals our layered relationship with nature and technology. 

Sustainability and consciousness, however, are not only embedded in the artwork itself but also in the way the work is produced and presented. When working with audio-visual media, we choose to use second-hand screens and projectors, equipment that has already lived a full life and would otherwise be discarded.  Reusing and repurposing materials is a small but intentional gesture toward more sustainable creative practices. As artists, we believe this mindset is essential. We all need to embrace approaches that reduce waste, extend the life of materials, and reflect a more conscious relationship with the world we are trying to engage. 

Finally, what message or call to action would you like to share with readers? 

Notice. Listen. Respond. 

Art begins with attention. Walk, observe, and hear the rhythms of the world around you. Let landscapes,  streets, and tides guide your creativity. Each gesture, sound, or material becomes part of a living dialogue with the environment. Slow down. Engage deeply. Create with care. In noticing, we connect with place, with memory, with possibility.

Find more about the artists here.

Cover image:

Intertidal - 2025. Ceramic, found material, video, audio, digital screens, cables. H 40 × W 200 × D 200 cm. By A Collinson & X Ma.

All images courtesy of A Collinson & X Ma.