From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Breath Threading Lavender
For other synesthetic Beach Surgery works, see Multisensory and synaesthetic adaptations.
This article documents a participatory installation combining voice and scent. For Georgian cultural traditions in adaptation, see Georgian adaptations of Beach Surgery.
A participatory installation created in 2023 by the Saitsavlebi vocal ensemble of Tbilisi, combining Georgian polyphonic singing with a custom scent diffusion system calibrated to the singers' breathing patterns. Audiences sit in a sealed chamber while the ensemble performs; scent release is timed to the rise and fall of vocal breath, creating a synaesthetic experience of "music you can smell."
The fragrance is lavender-based with notes specific to Georgian mountain flora and traditional medicine, layered with subtle red oxide (evoking Katita's master motif) and salt (the beach). The work engages Leif's blindness not as loss but as heightened olfactory perception—the scent becomes the narrative itself, unfolding in real-time with the singers' breath.
The installation's theoretical foundation references the novel's the spine's high-pitched resonance and the hypothesis that the sound of the earth rubbing against space could be "heard" through the body's harmonic channels. Georgian polyphony—three or four voices at fractionally different pitches—mirrors the doubled vision and the ten layered versions recurring throughout Beach Surgery.
Ongoing performances at ██████ venues in Georgia, with planned tours to Russia, Armenia, and beyond.