Story by Dana Milbank and Hailey Haymond / The Washington Post
Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World | Brian House
For eons, the Earth has been talking to us. New technology allows us to listen.
AMHERST, Mass. — Brian House, in long beard and muck boots, leads me through a pine forest on a cold afternoon until, on the edge of a marsh, we find it: an array of three circles formed by plastic milk crates equipped with furry microphone covers and connected by tubes to microbarometers.
It looks like the sort of thing one might use to make contact with extraterrestrials, or perhaps Satan, if you’re into that sort of thing. But House, a professor at Amherst College and a sound artist, has more earthly interests. A sign cautions wanderers in these woods not to touch: “Atmospheric Infrasound Research in Progress.”
House produces his art by recording sounds that are outside the range of human hearing. He then speeds them up or slows them down, so we can experience what had been inaudible. In this case, he’s collecting atmospheric infrasound — the extremely long-wave sounds from ocean currents, volcanoes, glaciers and even data centers — that can travel hundreds to thousands of miles and are all around us, even if we can’t perceive them. […]