Circum Pacific 5.1 is one of several works in which geophysicist and artist Florian Dombois examines the sonic conversion of earthquake data as the amplitude values of an acoustic signal.[1] In the winter of 1988/1989, Florian Dombois’s background as a geophysicist took him to the volcano observatory on the island of Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where the earthquake waves of the so-called Ring of Fire, a region that is particularly active tectonically, converge. For Circum Pacific 5.1, the seismological recordings over a period of three weeks (January 1–21, 2001) were integrated with tectonic activity recorded at five other measurement stations (Papua New Guinea, Russia, California, the Easter Islands, the Antarctic). In the installation, the distances of the five measurement stations are represented to scale by means of five loudspeakers, in which 5.1 surround-sound technology is employed to play back the sound material, which has been compressed to fifteen minutes. This arrangements allows the simultaneous perception of local seismic activity recorded at the remote stations. During the fifteen minutes of seismic activity, one hears four earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 on the Richter scale with epicenters in the Philippines, Vanuatu, the Aleutian Islands, and El Salvador. Over extended intervals, the haptic sound quality is reminiscent of the noise of rushing water more or less regularly interrupted by clicks, while the earth’s tremors are comparable to the sound of a low-pitched gong. The installational presentation also provides the opportunity to actively explore the spatial dimension.
[1] The work Auditory Seismology also deserves mention here. This is a Web-based introduction to the audification of earthquake data recorded by seismographs.
