sound – Sensing Our World

Rare Earthenware

Title: Rare Earthenware
Artists: Unknown Field Division in collaboration with FIX
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): visual
Issue(s): toxic e-waste, metals, pollution

The Unknown Fields Division is a ‘nomadic design research studio that ventures out on expeditions to the ends of the earth to bear witness to alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness’.¹ Therefore, it is concerned with the various problematic interactions between nature and society. A particular project from the studio, Rare Earthenware was foregrounded in Neural in 2016. This project concerned visibilising the e-waste in the form of toxic metal, integral to the production of digital technologies such as smartphones and laptops.

In the Rare Earthenware project, documentation from areas of rare earth metal production were combined with ceramics production to create a visual and material representation of the toxicity of production of digital devices. The project traced the global supply chain of rare earth metals to ‘their source at a toxic lake in Inner Mongolia’.² Mud was taken from this lake and vases were created from the mud, in collaboration with ceramicist Kevin Callaghan. The vases were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2014, and an accompanying video was also produced.

Where are the wild ones?

Title: Where are the wild ones?
Artist(s): Kaffe Matthews
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Audio, visual
Issue(s): Environmental health of water

This project is a place-based study of the river Tyne, charting through sound and visuals the journey of the Atlantic salmon, and revealing material from the source, long the length of the Tyne, to its mouth. The work is presented as sound and video, and ‘will weave myth with scientific data to make new music’.¹ The installation therefore mixes originally composed music, with sonic data from the river, along with Environment Agency of the UK data on pH levels, temperature, flow rates, oxygen and ammonia levels in the Tyne. These multiple data points ‘were used to define melody structure and rhythmic quality’.² Along with these environmental data points, Matthews also included data on fish populations and mortality (ibid.).

This project aims to engage ‘audiences of all ages’ (KM site), in a place-based environmental narrative of the river Tyne. Its contributions therefore are in how it engages local communities on matters connected to an aspect of their local environment.

Trees: Rendering Ecophysiological Processes Audible

Title: Trees: Rendering Ecophysiological Processes Audible
Artist(s): Marcus Maeder
Source: NEURAL
Sense(s): Sound, Installation
Issue(s): Environmental impact of climate change

This research project by Marcus Maeder seeks to render audible certain processes of trees and forests. Maeder recorded various sounds of trees using scientific measurement tools (Neural). He then presented the work in spatial audio installations, where the speakers playing the sounds are ‘suspended in the shape of a cube formed by 9 columns of 4 speakers each. Using virtual imaging techniques field recordings of climate conditions are projected outside of the boundaries of the installation, while recordings of the acoustic emissions of trees are reproduced within the installation on individual speaker columns’ (Neural). In addition, the environment in which the installation is playing, is fed by environmental data from the trees/forest, such as temperature affecting the loudness of the installation.

Thus, the installation provides a complex sonic landscape from both outside and within the forest installation. However, in creating a feedback loop from within the forest installation that affects the sounds itself, it echoes the feedback loops created by society upon nature. It is therefore relevant for this project. Indeed, ‘the combination of both recognizable and previously unheard sounds create a sonic representation of natural processes, attempting to convey the complexity of specific ecological systems through correlations between processed environmental data and recordings of acoustic phenomena’ (Neural).

eLEmeNT: EaRTh

Title: eLEmeNT: EaRTh
Artist(s): Nandita Kumar
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Sound, vision, touch – multisensory
Issue(s): Nature/society relationship, human impact on ecosystems

Element Earth is an elegant and delicate mixed media installation that is inspired by the principle of biomimicry
¹, that is ‘a design discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf. The core idea is that Nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with: energy, food production, climate control, non-toxic chemistry, transportation, packaging, and a whole lot more’.² This project therefore functions as a model of a living ecosystem, made with wood, printed circuit boards, sensors and various other elements associated with digital and/or electronic arts. The model is placed in a glass jar, providing the compelling visual of a ‘natural’ ecosystem made up of electronic components.

However, this work is not just a representational model – it in itself is ‘living’. For example, a tree within the model is made of solar cells which charges the circuit boards within the model. When charged, these electronic circuits make nature-based sounds such as those of the ‘big bang, the sound of earth from a distance through radio waves, whales mating, rain, wind, birds, etc’.
³ Furthermore, the human impact on this model environment is evidenced by a sensor attached to the glass jar itself. When the jar is touched ‘it makes high pitched electronic sounds which indicates our carbon imprinting on the diorama of Earth’ (ibid.).

Therefore, this project is a multi-sensory and interactive piece which not only visibilises the nature/society relationship, but in allowing for dramatic responses to the interaction with the jar, it materialises the human impact on an ecosystem in a bold symbolic audio gesture.

Cocíclo

Title: Cocíclo
Artist(s): Alexandre Castonguay
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Sound
Issue(s): Carbon monoxide pollution

Cocíclo is a device that measures carbon monoxide concentrations in urban environments. This device consists of various entities, such as a wearable that geolocates the user wearing the device, while also alerting the user with sound beeps depending on concentrations of CO. Additionally there is a ‘Cocíclo marker’ which is a ‘chalk-marking tool that inscribes the CO variations directly on the sidewalks or streets of the city’.¹ What is a key point for this project is in the observation that ‘The traditional visualization tools are not adequate for citizen involvement: We often witness data heatmaps of pollutants within our cities but they feel distant since they are not related to our actual experiences. Being situated at street level and witnessing the rapid evolution of pollutants because of our proximity to the sources of pollution, the data becomes more accurate (carbon monoxide dissipates rapidly from the emitting source), the experience is embodied and not abstracted’.² The chalk itself is impermanent, and thus serves as a suitable material for inscribing the data on streets, without the permanency of other materials. Thus, it both visibilises environmental data, and does so in a way that allows for changing levels of CO concentrations across time.

Pikslo deep diving

strong>Title: Pikslo deep diving
Artist(s): Robertina Šebjanič
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Sound
Issue(s): Underwater noise pollution

This project consists of field recordings and workshops to investigate the role of underwater noise pollution. The project acknowledges underwater noise pollution caused by human activity, and asks us to reflect on the sonic impacts of human activity on marine life.

Plastic Souls

Title: Plastic Souls
Artist(s): Geert-Jan Hobijn
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): Sound
Issue(s): plastic waste in the ocean

This work functions as an art installation and a form of activism in the form of beach litter cleaning. In this work, Hobijn created a floating musical instrument made entirely from reclaimed plastic beach litter. Furthermore, he created instructions for the replication of the instrument. When installed at a beach location ‘the waves of the sea will act as the musician of the instrument, which thereby also takes on the role of a siren and hopefully make people more aware of the disturbing trend of plastic waste on beaches and in oceans and seas’. ¹ Thus, the installation both sonifies the motion of the waves, and in doing so in situ, visibilises the kinds of plastic waste that may have washed up on that beach.

The project is significant, in that it includes several tutorials and documentation to enable others to make their own version of the work. It was included in the German version of Make magazine, a popular magazine for DIY/hacker culture. This acknowledges the global issue of plastic waste, and enables would-be artists and activists anywhere affected by plastic ocean pollution to visibilise, sonify and materialise it.

What is Rising

Title: What is Rising
Artist(s): Gaspard and Sandra Bébié-Valérian
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): Sonic, visual, visceral/touch
Issue(s): Fracking

What is Rising is an audio-visual performance on the theme of fracking. The performance takes place in an anechoic chamber, that is one where there is no sound reverberation. The experience of being in an anechoic chamber has been described as very uncomfortable. The artists draw upon seismic data from earthquakes caused by fracking, and they use this data in a live audio-visual composition, where sounds are mixed with on-screen visuals and type, in a ‘sonic and sensory composition’.¹
The seismographs from existing earthquakes are ‘performed’ in real time in what is both a performance and installation.²

Additionally, there is a narrated component, with two narrators describing contrasting perspectives on the technological future-present. One character ‘trusts the system, he believes in its proficiency and thinks he belongs to [a] global system he doesn’t want to fight against’.³ The other character ‘feels the things, he’s scary [sic] and knows that he will ineluctably die in the catastrophe. He questions the system and tries to understand it’ (ibid.). Mixed with these voices are low-frequency sounds, and even infrasound, which is sound at frequencies that cannot be heard but are felt in the body. This adds a visceral component to the installation.

Woodpecker

Title: Woodpecker
Artist(s): Rihards Vitols
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): Sound
Issue(s): Biodiversity loss

This piece is a stark solution to the issue of biodiversity loss, specifically that of bird species. In this piece Vitols asks the question Should bird populations decline drastically in the near future, could fake birds replace them and contribute to keeping the natural balance of a forest intact?¹ Based on research that Vitols found, indicating that trees can emit sounds under conditions of drought that affect insects preying on the compromised tree. Under such conditions, birds naturally keep the insect population in check, but with declining biodiversity, the absence or decline in the birds would affect the insect population.

Thus, Vitols set up an installation that replaces live woodpeckers with artificial ones that make similar sounds to woodpeckers, thus causing the destructive insects to avoid the particular trees in which the devices are installed. To that end, he developed thirty artificial woodpeckers and installed them in a forest near Dusseldorf.² He then monitored the devices on a weekly basis. While there is no conclusive evidence available on the outcome of the project, it is noted that ‘Despite the generated sound, the invasion of Vitols devices seems like a peaceful attempt to restore the balance of an ecosystem, one in which a simple but strategically applied technology becomes the simulation of a crucial natural communication between insects, trees and birds, one that is now missing despite its fundamental role in their mutual survival’.³

Therefore, this project stands as a visualisation and sonification of a sad environmental outcome – that of species decline. Therefore, it connects the hubris of the ‘tech fix’ approach to environmental crisis, with the pathos of the small artificial birds attempting a hollow simulacrum of the real species.

Weather Thingy

Title: Weather Thingy
Artist(s): Adrien Kaeser
Source: Creative Applications
Sense(s): sound, installation
Issue(s): weather data, climate change

This piece offers a form of algorithmic composition by attaching environmental sensors to a keyboard synthesiser. The environmental sensors measure rain, wind speed, and wind direction. This data is converted into MIDI signals, which are used to trigger various sounds. In this way, the artist ‘was particularly interested in being able to use the controller in Live [computer software], so that the listeners can feel (in real time) the impact of the climate on the composition’. ¹ Therefore, while the artist maintains control over the sounds being played, the artist and audience alike are aware that the sensors, and thus the weather, are also influencing what is sounded.