Concept:
Intra-terrestrial Soundings is an installation that offers human
participants an opportunity to tune into - and bodily experience
- the vibrations made by tiny, soil-dwelling beings. Humans continue
to be interested in detecting signals of extra-terrestrial life
in outer space, but have overlooked the intra-terrestrial signals
of life – the worms and insects that sustain our own terrestrial
existence. This highly amplified environment allows humans a chance
to appreciate these extraordinary life forms through live, amplified
sounds and infrared video. Hopefully this experience will give
a viewer/participant a different sense of the life inside the
earth; one that goes beyond the scientific and instead approaches
something more akin to fellowship, communion or appreciation.
Experience:
The human participant will enter a dimly lit space that contains
a worm-shaped box, wired up to a worm-shaped chaise lounge. Visible
on the ceiling is a live video projection of the interior of a
worm box. The participant/viewer might decide to sit or lie down
to view the projections above. They will experience vibrations
from just under surface of the lounge, which are the live sounds
of the worm box, highly amplified and directed into speakers attached
to the underside of the lounge. It is possible for the human participant
to spatially locate the activity inside the worm box, based on
the location of the multiple speakers placed underneath them.
They can hear and "feel" the vibrations of the worms
and other insects in the box, who are going about their regular
activities of eating, moving and making fertilizer. An infrared
camera inside the dark container feeds live, projected images
onto the ceiling to provide viewers with visual confirmation of
the life inside.
Tech:
8 custom microphones made with aluminum cans and piezo
film sensors are embedded into the bedding of an active worm box full
of red wiggler composting worms (a good worm and bedding
supplier is Happy D
Ranch). Each mic is connected to an 8 channel firewire interface
(MOTU
896) which is connected to a Mac G4 laptop that filters the
noise in real time (AudioDesk
software) and then feeds the signals out to the 8 amplified
speakers attached to the underside of a chaise lounge. There is
also an infra-red video camera (invisible to worms) inside the
worm box that connects to a video projector which projects a live
image onto the ceiling. Technical advisors: Richard
Mankin, David
Foster, Carl Bailey, Daniel
Joliffe and the helpful people on the MOTU
listserv.
Inspirations:
-
Kenneth Rinaldo - Artist and fellow worm appreciator.
-
Richard Mankin - Research Entomologist, US Department of Agriculture
(USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Center for Medical,
Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE)
-
The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms
- a book by Amy Stewart
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