Christine Kim – Looking Outwards-04

Semiconductor’s ‘Earthworks‘ for SonarPLANTA

The art duo Semiconductors Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt created Earthworks, which is an installation that can replicate the images and sounds of the Earth’s dynamic movement. While the Earth moves, it creates visuals in waveforms with different colors. Jarman and Gerhardt worked with colored layers of sand and recorded the timelapse of the Earth movement over thousands of years and then worked with the seismic data. They record the seismic data and those digital information becomes a waveform that translate to sounds. The main tool for this project was MATLAB (Matrix Laboratory) that packs all the data like location, instrument, frequency, and timeframe, into one packet. I suppose those data along with the sound recording of the Earth movement were computed to create visuals that represent how the Earth was moving for thousands of years. I could not find an exact algorithm that they used. Because the sound generates visuals in this project, you can assume that sound determines how the visuals are formed. This project allows one to connect and feel the Earth. It is so interesting that Jarman and Gerhardt were able to literally record the sound of Earth and from that create images of the Earth movement and formation. Jarman and Gerhardt’s passion for nature, technology, and science clearly show through this project and further leads others to question and explore the Earth.

Joe Gerhardt and Ruth Jarman at University of Barcelona with the study model of sand

Earthworks