Review | By The Wire Magazine (The Wire 502)
Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World | Brian House
In Amherst, Massachusetts, more than 150 years ago, Emily Dickinson wrote of her appetite for silence. Brian House, on a visit to the poet’s home town, made recordings of low frequency noises pervading the air yet ordinarily inaudible to the human ear. These pulsations of infrasound may have originated in remote events: wildfires; turbulence in oceans; some distant glacier receding. For Dickinson, all would have been subsumed into her consciousness of silence. But House sped up his recordings, condensing a day into 24 minutes, rendering infrasound audible in the process. Everyday Infrasound In An Uncertain World is a notable document in terms of its conceptual and technological ingenuity. The title also registers House’s sensitivity to pressing ecological issues that reverberate through our lives. […]