"The sound of an Earthquake Contained in a room" -
Solo Show Currently open at Le Creux de l'Enfer Centre d'art contemporain
"The sound of an earthquake contained in a room" is a Sound Sculpture that explores the use of infrasound frequencies generated by earthquakes all around the globe. The collected data comes from scientific observatories, and is then transposed into a kinetic Sculpture with thousands of recycled wood sticks. The piece was created after a period of site-specific research within different tech seismological observatories around the world.
Each piece of wood is attached one by one into the prepared platform, containing two infrasound speakers behind. The speaker directly translates Infrasound frequencies into the platform, and thus all the woods vibrate and clash with each other in response to the acoustic pressure.
The piece is controlled by code, alternating between hundreds of seismic vibrations of different intensities and geographical locations. By creating a Sculpture that reacts and depends on naturally occurring Infrasound frequencies, I am giving a physical form to a reality that is otherwise hidden from our senses all the time.
Although infrasounds cannot be biologically heard by human beings, they generate acoustic energy and vibration, resulting in a kinetic sound sculpture, whose output is entirely acoustic, generated by constant clash between physical elements, a sculptural metaphor to what happens everyday within the Earth's Crust.
The effects of the infrasonic range have been extensively researched, and although they constitute sounds that cannot be perceived by the human ear, they have a strong biological effect in our body and mind. Infrasounds are known to generate feelings of discomfort, fear, anxiety and even visual hallucinations in human beings. One of the main explanations for this biological effect is that infrasound is often produced by natural cataclysms, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and heavy storms, therefore our primal biological organism has evolved to feel discomfort in the eminence of a possible catastrophe.
This artwork plays within such effects, by simultaneously generating a mesmerising kinetic effect on the viewer, and possibly inducing anxiety and fear.
This Sculpture uses the force of our natural landscape as a performative act in itself, where Nature is not something I intend to describe or portrait, but rather an unpredictable force that affects my artwork. It's a Sound Art piece generated by unpredictable acoustic energy, therefore having its own autonomy, ephemerality, and always changing through the course of the exhibition.
https://www.creuxdelenfer.fr/fr/exhibitions/952-gil-delindro
