Circum Pacific 5.1

Sound Installation

DVD, 5 loudspeakers on tripods, subwoofer, DVD player

2003

Circum Pacific 5.1

Technical basics
Five seismic stations located around the Pacific (Russia, California, Easter Island, Antarctic, Papua New Guinea), whose configuration around the globe corresponds roughly to a Surround Sound 5.1 system. Three weeks of continual measurements (01/01/2001–21/01/2001) of the on-site seismometers were compressed to yield some fourteen minutes of audified sound material.

Artistic concept
In the winter 1988–89 I worked at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is here that the seismic waves of the so-called “Ring of Fire” intersect, the most active tectonic zone encircling the Pacific. How would it sound if this permanent activity were compressed into one space? What the gaze through the viewfinder is for the photographer is the data timewindow for listeners to Circum Pacific 5.1. And just as motifs can be positioned in a photograph, one can also arrange sound events in the audified recording.

Description in: Peter Kiefer (ed.): Klangräume der Kunst, Heidelberg 2010, p. 337.
Dieter Daniels, Sandra Naumann (eds.): Audiovisuology 1: See This Sound, Cologne 2010, p. 292.

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