Dolby Earth / Tectonic Surround-Sound

"In any given instant," the Discovery Channel reminds us, "one or more rocky plates beneath Earth's surface are in motion, and now visitors to a California museum exhibit can hear virtually every big and small earthquake simultaneously in just a few seconds off real time. Scientists have captured earthquake noises before, but this is believed to be the first instantaneous, unified recording of multiple global tectonic events, and it sounds like the constant, dull roar of the world's biggest earthquake chorus."


The planet, droning like a bell in space.
Of course, the musicalization of the earth's tectonic plates has come up on BLDGBLOG before, specifically in the context of 9/11 and the collapse of the Twin Towers. Among many other things, 9/11 was an architectural event which shook the bedrock of Manhattan; the resulting vibrations were turned into a piece of abstract music by composer Mark Bain (more info at the Guardian – and you can listen to an excerpt here).
Meanwhile, if somebody set up a radio station – perhaps called Dolby Earth – permanently dedicated to realtime platecasts of the earth's droning motions... at the very least I'd be a dedicated listener.
A glimpse of what could have been: Earth: The Peel Sessions.
In any case, if I could also remind everyone here of an interview with David Ulin, in which he discusses the intellectual and philosophical perils of earthquake prediction – the topic of his excellent book, The Myth of Solid Ground. One of the predictors, for instance, discussed in Ulin's book, spends his time "monitoring a symphony of static coming from an elaborate array of radios tuned between stations at the low end of the dial."
Dolby Earth, indeed.

(Thanks to Alex P. for the Discovery Channel link! Related: Sound Dunes)

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