Luginsland (Sound and Score)

Background Information

 

Kunsthalle Bern (CH)

The installation 'Luginsland' is one of five works that engaged with the Kunsthalle Bern and that were shown there as part of the group exhibition 'Pre-Emptive' from August 18 to October 8, 2006. The installation consists of two seismometers set up next to one another on the floor at the end of the last room (no. 7) in the basement of the Kunsthalle. The cable of one of the seismometers disappears into the wall, while the cable of the other leads along the window side of the room to an analogue recorder. The latter, at approximately chest-height, records in red ink the measurements on a hanging role of paper. The pen is constantly moving, sometimes oscillating more, and sometimes less. At the end of every full minute, which is regulated by a radio clock, a marker is set. To the left of the device, at a height of about 1.8 metres, a holder is attached to the wall with eight arms that can be swivelled and on which blank or already inscribed paper rolls are hanging. Marked on the sheets are the time, week and date of the measurement, and across the sheet in the corresponding areas “Monday”, “Tuesday” and so on up to “Sunday”. Contextual events are emphasised with notes such as “earthquake in Kamchatka” etc. Between the seismographic recorder and the seismogram holder is a chair. All three are arranged below a window of which one pane is open.

The experiment ended with the finissage and the two recordings were stored as 7 paper sheets and 7 CDs. The soundtracks of the CDs were produced by audifying digital recordings, documenting the same time frame as the drawings, using an acceleration factor of 700; transposing the inaudible earth and floor movements into the human audible range.

 

Technical Data

Seismometer: 46°56‘39.21“ N / 7°26‘58.36“ O / 533 m ü. NN

Samplerate: 20 Hz

Week 0: 17.08.06 08:18 – 22.08.06 06:18

Week 1: 22.08.06 06:18 – 28.08.06 15:44

Week 2: 28.08.06 15:44 – 04.09.06 06:48

Week 3: 04.09.06 06:48 – 11.09.06 10:23

Week 4: 11.09.06 10:23 – 20.09.06 14:41

Week 5: 20.09.06 14:41 – 25.09.06 13:20

Week 6: 25.09.06 13:20 – 03.10.06 09:04

Week 7: 03.10.06 09:04 – 09.10.06 12:58

Acceleration factor for all sound files: 700

Sound editing with Beat Müller

With the kind support of Swiss Seismological Service

 

 

Galerie gelbe MUSIK, Berlin (D)

Galerie gelbe MUSIK is situated in Berlin, Schaperstrasse 11, Germany, and sells records from visual artists, experimental music, visual artistic scores of musicians etc. It focuses on the interaction of the visual and the acoustic and has housed, since 1981, exhibitions of many artists such as John Cage, Nam Jun Paik, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, Henning Christiansen, Joseph Beuys and Christian Marclay.

When I was invited for a solo show ('Off the Record', 06/06/2009 – 19/09/2009), I reinstalled the written recordings of 'Luginsland' on the walls and made the 7 CD's of recordings available to be played on the gallery's sound system. People were therefore able to 'read' the drawings on the wall while listening to the sounds.

 

Artistic Roots

The aspect of scores and the interaction of sound and image were central to the show at Galerie gelbe MUSIK and it is also for the exposition here. Even though this aspect is only a part of 'Luginsland', I have a longer personal story to accompany it:

* My interest in the interaction between sound and image had its kick off when I saw 'Für Augen und Ohren' (curator: René Block), an exhibition that took place 1980 at Akademie der Künste Berlin. This was also the very moment that Galerie gelbe MUSIK started business.

* Between 2001 and 2004 I was project manager of "Fidelio, 21. Jahrhundert" a staging of Beethoven's only opera in a virtual environment (artistic director: Johanna Dombois; the piece is on display at Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Germany). During this time I launched an investigation into visual music and became heavily intrigued by works of Norman McLaren, Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye and the Whitney brothers, where sounds and music triggered visuals. Furthermore, Luigi Russulo, Morton Feldman and Earl Brown attracted my attention with their invention of new forms of scores.

* 2007 I was involved in the exhibition 'Allan Kaprow - Art as Life' (curators: Eva Meyer-Hermann and Stephanie Rosenthal) at the Kunsthalle Bern (CH) lecturing students to re-enact several happenings. Kaprow noted all his happenings as scores and raised herewith the important question of liveness in the arts. I also participated in the show 'A Fantasy for Allan Kaprow' (curators: Mai Abu ElDahab and Philippe Pirotte) 2009 at CIC Cairo (ET), for which I contributed 'Tears of Isis'. Furthermore the aspect of shared authorship interested me and I studied works like László Moholy-Nagy's 'Telephonbilder' (telephone pictures).

 

 

Further Reading

On Luginsland

Dombois, Florian: "Kunst als Forschung. Beispiel: Luginsland (2006)". In: "Doing Theory - Ein Jubiläum", 31 - Das Magazin des Instituts für Theorie der Gestaltung und Kunst 8-9 (2006) 57-64. (download)

Jeanpierre, L.: "Chercher l‘erreur - Spot the Mistake", in artpress 347 (2008), 42-44

Kunsthalle Bern (ed.): "Florian Dombois. What Are the Places of Danger. Works 1999-2009". Berlin, 2010, 101-113.

von Borries, F., C. Hiller und W. Renfordt (Hg.): "KlimaKunst-Forschung", Berlin 2011, 94-103.


Artists using audified seismic data

Florian Dombois, e.g. "Earthquake Sounds. Volume 1: Kobe 16.1.1995, 20:46 ut". St. Augustin, 1999.

Franz John, e.g.: "Turing Tables. An untitled composition for tectonic spaces" 2001 (Sound installation developed with Ed Osborn (Oakland, CA) and Sascha Brossmann (Berlin, D))

Kookoon, e.g.: "Inner Earth. A seismosonic symphony". Berlin, 1999. (Music-CD by Wolfgang Loos and Frank Scherbaum)

Manuela Meier and Anna Saranti, e.g.: "Sonic Explorations with Earthquake Data". In: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Auditory Display, Paris, France, June 24–27, 2008

 

On audifying seismic data

Cellini, Andrea; Mariotti, Mauro and Nucera, Francesco: "Fonosismologia, un approccio nuovo per l'analisi sismica". In: ARS 73.3/4 (2000), 22-24.

Dombois, Florian: "Über Erdbeben. Ein Versuch zur Erweiterung seismologischer Darstellungsweisen". Diss., Berlin, 1998.

Dombois, Florian: "Listen to Seismograms. About Acoustic Interpretation of Seismometric Records." In: Geophysical Research Abstracts 3 (2001), 982.

Dombois, Florian: "Using Audification in Planetary Seismology". In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Auditory Display, Espoo, Finland, July 29 - August 1, 2001, 227-230.

Dombois, Florian: "Reflektierte Phantasie. Vom Erfinden und Erkennen, insbesondere in der Seismologie". In: Paragrana (2006) Beiheft 2, 101-111.

Dombois, F. and G. Eckel: "Audification" in T. Hermann, A. Hunt und J. Neuhoff (Hg.): The Sonification Handbook, Berlin 2011, 302-326.

Frantti, G. E. and Leverault, L. A.: "Auditory Discrimination of Seismic Signals from Earthquakes and Explosions". In: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 55 (1965), 1-25.

Hayward, Chris: "Listening to the Earth Sing". In: G. Cramer (ed.): Auditory Display. Reading, 1994, 369-404.

Speeth, Sheridan Dauster: "Seismometer Sounds". In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 33 (1961), 909-916.

 

Web-Links

Auditory Seismology: http://www.auditory-seismology.org

USGS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/listen/index.php

The Sound of Seismic: http://crack.seismo.unr.edu/sounds/index.html

Fonosismologia: http://mariottim.interfree.it/doc12_e.htm

Sonifyer: http://www.sonifyer.org