“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, August 19, 2011

Felix Hess, Air Pressure Fluctuations

...I'd read about this work in David Toop's book Haunted Weather. It goes like this:

Get some infrasound mikes. Record in your home for 15 days. Speed up the result 360 times normal.

One hears high-pitched whistles, beeps and insect-like buzzes ... which come from the deep rumblings of factories, trains, and trucks and other motor cars, or even nearby washing machines. The opening and closing of doors gives rise to countless tiny clicks, which may add up to form a sound like soft rain on autumn leaves ... Finally, an extraordinary presence: a rich, deep drone, originally at 0.2Hz, audible like a multi-engined heavy airplane in the distance. This deep droning sound, at times all but inaudible, is formed by oscillations in the atmosphere—microbarons—caused by standing waves on the Atlantic Ocean, far away. The space is very wide.

I just got the CD and I'm listening as I write this. I was excited enough by the concept to talk about it in my books a little, but this is the first time I've actually heard it. It's going straight into my Queen Mary talk. Hyperobjects.

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