Aeolian City

This wind activated auditory intervention is an attempt to accentuate and expand the expected soundscape of the city streets and outdoor public spaces.

Aeolian vibrations (named for Aeolus, the Greek god of the wind) are the source of the sound: Strings of equal length and varying thicknesses are strung and tuned to the same pitch. When they vibrate in the wind they produce mysterious harmonic overtones which float and dissipate into the general soundscape, at times consumed or overridden by the noise of the city. The artwork itself is carried in the air, resonating and alive, ephemeral and intermittent.

The visually subtle components will be installed throughout the city, creating a network of auditory experience for those walking the city streets. Printed maps will be distributed indicating the various installation locations, as well as a PDF version which will be made available at www.adadenil.art (follow @attagirl.ad on instagram for updates).

In this work I am actively collaborating with the city – It’s spaces, structures, and individuals moving within and between them. These collective influences work in combination with natural wind directions and fluctuations in weather. Sound bridges the divide between one body and another, between each inhabitant and the structural, constructed body around us. It is meant to activate the space between. Reverberating around and through us, we can experience it at the same moment individually as we do collectively, despite our physical separation from one another.

“Sound is intrinsically and unignorably relational: it emanates, propagates, communicates, vibrates, and agitates; it leaves a body and enters others; it binds and unhinges, harmonizes and traumatizes; it sends the body moving, the mind dreaming, the air oscillating. It seemingly eludes definition, while having profound effect.”1

1. Brandon LaBelle. 2015. Background Noise, Second Edition : Perspectives on Sound Art. Vol. Second edition. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.