Review | By Monique Brouillette / MIT Technology Review
Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World | Brian House
Listen to Earth’s rumbling, secret soundtrack
A New England artist makes music from the imperceptible noises of nature—using tools that usually detect hidden nuclear explosions.
The boom of a calving glacier. The crackling rumble of a wildfire. The roar of a surging storm front. They’re the noises of the living Earth, music of this one particular sphere and clues to the true nature of these dramatic events. But as loud as all these things are, they emit even more acoustic energy below the threshold of human hearing, at frequencies of 20 hertz or lower. These “infrasounds” have such long wavelengths that they can travel around the globe as churning emanations of distant events. But humans have never been able to hear them.
Until now, that is. Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World, a new album by the musician and artist Brian House, condenses 24 hours of these rumbles into 24 minutes of the most basic of bass lines, putting a new spin on the idea of ambient music. Sound, even infrasound, is really just variations in air pressure. So House built a set of three “macrophones,” tubes that funnel air into a barometer capable of taking readings 100 times a second. From the quiet woods of western Massachusetts, House can pick up what the planet is laying down. Then he speeds the recording up by a factor of 60 so that it’s audible to the wee ears of humans. “I am really interested in the layers of perception that we can’t access,” he says. “It’s not only low sound, but it’s also distant sound. That kind of blew my mind.” […]