resonator.bldg

There was a short article in the August 2004 issue of The Wire about sound artist Mark Bain. "Equipped with seismometers," The Wire writes, Bain "can turn architectural structures into giant musical instruments and demolish buildings with sound alone." His installations have included "sensing devices, oscillators and the occasional sculptural element" – such as the "six metre high inflatable speaker" featured below.


This is the Sonusphere, formerly installed in the Edith Russ Haus, Germany. The Sonusphere musicalizes the effects of plate tectonics: "Modified seismic sensors pick up the normally unheard movements of the earth and are channeled through the entire building until reaching a 'crescendo' in Bain's sonusphere. Unique in its purpose and design, the sonusphere is essentially a wired, inflatable ball that fills the entire upper floor and takes signals generated from an acoustic network running through the entire architecture. It acts as a low frequency, 360 degree, acoustic radiator translating the sound to its curved walls as physically pulsating sound pressure."
Bain's work, The Wire explains, references "the ideas of maverick engineer Nikola Tesla." Tesla's prolific output and avant-garde electrical ideas inspired Bain to develop "a system for resonating buildings that allowed him to 'play' structures. 'The multi-resonator system I designed could drive waveforms into buildings,' Bain comments, 'like giant additive synthesis where you get different beatings of frequencies and shifted harmonics. I was basically designing systems that turned a structure into a musical instrument.'"
Elsewhere, we're told, "the portable earthquake machines [that Bain] showed in Holland in 2001 produced severe tremors that spread through the surrounding area. Then there was Het Paard, a large music venue in The Hague slated for demolition. The oscillators he attached to the building activated the entire structure, inflicting severe damage on parts of the walls and ceilings."
Of course, Bain has been on BLDGBLOG before, where we discuss a musical composition of his made entirely from seismic data recorded during the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 – the trembling of Manhattan turned into a roar of sound. (Listen to an excerpt here).

(Similar ideas are taken up in this post).