sonic surrounds

Via the imminent Sydney Gang Festival’s blog, I discovered this great video of vibrating cornstarch (a “shear-thickening liquid” so I gather), forming persistent holes and “fingers”. Oh, and I think the relevance of this post on Gang Festival’s blog is laterally something to do with a “Ring of Fire” display of model volcanoes tonight (Thursday 10 January 6PM) at Gallery Fourtyfour Darlinghurst (see flier).

The totally amusing video below seems to be a funked-up remix of much drier videos over at revver (though I’m not sure these are the original source).

Makes me think of daydreams I’ve had of using audio-visual-haptic feedback to make audio-visual kinetic sculptures interactive with the sounds of viewers… (one more item on the list of things to try when I have more spare time)

Also reminds me of work with ferroliquids by Sachiko Kodama, Yasushi Miyajima - and others (examples here and here - with a mention of DIY ferroliquids made of [toxic] motor oil and laser printer toner).

Anyway, here’s the vid:

Andrea Polli, on her blog from an artist residency in Antarctia, posted an incredible sonified siesmometer recording of “Iceberg B15A” breaking up. The resulting sound poetically begins resembling a windswept desolate icescape, with sonar-like pings and deep submarine booms. Later it features moments of monumental tearing almost becoming a semi-organic, alien scream and later again, skittish gaseous sounds like dry ice on a hotplate…

You have to listen to it. This sound is an allegory of our times.

Andrea writes:

Dr. Douglas MacAyeal, Professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago sent me this moving sound file, as he describes:
“…that’s the sound of Iceberg B15A ‘breaking up’ (off Cape Adare, 27 October, 2005)…it’s really a seismometer record that’s been ’sped up’ by a factor of 1000 to make it audible.”

Author Website: http://www.andreapolli.com
Author Bio: Andrea Polli is a New York based artist whose work explores global systems.

The sound is linked into the media player below, from the original source at: http://90degrees.shashafeng.com/sound/B15As_exit_open.mp3

 

 Iceberg B15A breaking up, by Dr. Douglas MacAyeal, via Andrea Polli: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download