Exposition

Listening to a World Coming to Terms with Itself (2025)

Oprescu Simina

About this exposition

en
What if failure is not collapse but recalibration? This research reconsiders seismic activity as a speculative site of vibratory instability, adjustment, and relational tension, rather than disaster. Drawing on seismic data from the most significant Romanian earthquakes between 1977 and 2023, the project translates magnitudes into an immersive sound installation that renders the inaudible perceptible through algorithmic processing and low-frequency vibration. The resulting sonic environment invites discomfort and disorientation as productive states, reframing failure as a mode through which we may interpret stability itself differently. The work draws from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Jung’s archetypal theory, Bohm’s field theory, Deleuze’s pataphysics, Priest’s aesthetics of failure, and Eshun’s sonic fiction to position seismic resonance as a speculative and unstable threshold between sensing and knowing. Rather than presuming to represent the Earth’s voice, the installation critically engages with the ethical implications of translating geophysical data into sound, acknowledging the gaps, distortions, and interpretive acts involved. Instead of breakdown, failure becomes a condition of listening – one that resists mastery and opens a dialogue between human and more-than-human temporalities through sonic practice.

sv
Tänk om misslyckande inte är kollaps utan omställning? Denna forskning ser seismisk aktivitet som en spekulativ plats för vibrerande instabilitet, anpassning och relationell spänning, snarare än som katastrof. Med utgångspunkt i data från de mest betydande jordbävningarna i Rumänien mellan 1977 och 2023 översätter projektet magnituder till en immersiv ljudinstallation som gör det ohörbara hörbart med hjälp av algoritmisk bearbetning och lågfrekvent vibration. Den resulterande soniska miljön inbjuder till obehag och desorientering som produktiva tillstånd, och omformulerar misslyckande som ett sätt att tolka stabilitet på ett nytt sätt. Arbetet hämtar inspiration från Merleau-Pontys fenomenologi, Jungs arketypteori, Bohms fältteori, Deleuzes pataphysik, Priests estetik av misslyckande samt Eshuns soniska fiktion, för att positionera seismisk resonans som en spekulativ och instabil tröskel mellan att känna och att veta. Istället för att påstå sig representera jordens röst engagerar installationen sig kritiskt i de etiska implikationerna av att översätta geofysiska data till ljud, med medvetenhet om luckor, förvrängningar och tolkningar som processen innebär. Istället för kollaps blir misslyckande en förutsättning för lyssnande – ett lyssnande som motstår kontroll och öppnar en dialog mellan mänskliga och mer-än-mänskliga temporaliteter genom sonisk praktik.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsinaudible, sound art, Algorithmic Composition, earthquake, Bucharest, romanian music, failure, Physics, physicality, immersive, phenomenlogy, sonic fiction, nonhuman, speculative sonification
date03/12/2024
published21/10/2025
last modified21/10/2025
statuspublished
copyrightSimina Oprescu
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
languageEnglish
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3249911/3249912
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/vis.3249911
published inVIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
portal issue14. VIS Issue 14
external linkhttp://siminaoprescu.net

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