In 2013 Dutch artist Lotte Geeven travelled to the deepest hole on the planet to make a set of recordings allowing her to make the sound of the Earth audible. Accompanied by a team of engineers, geophysicists and seismologists, she lowered equipment into the KTP super-deep borehole, created for the German Continental Deep Drilling Program, located on German/Czech border. The borehole descends through the lithosphere into geological strata where two landmasses merged over 300 million years ago to form the supercontinent Pangea. At nearly 9km deep the conditions in the hole prohibited the use of standard microphones. Instead sonic transducer data and geophone recordings were analysed and remapped into audio frequencies by software designed by her team specifically for the task. The Sound of Earth comprises an installation of artifacts, some based on the audio and visual documentation made on site, others made as a poetic response to the trip and the data gathered. A seismograph augments the audio recordings – the fine weaving of the pen trace tiny ink threads that seem almost at odds with the deep bass frequencies of the recordings. Seismically we might perceive the earth as a delicately trembling planet, whereas sonically the low growling sounds insinuate more agitated, angry, even sinister moods. Also included in the installation is a framed photograph of the team – testimony to huge collaborative aspect of such a work. A pair of low frequency optimized speakers are used to output the “sound of the earth” – a short sonic signature of a longer audio earthwork that has been evolving for 100’s of million of years. Paul Prudence

 

The Sound Of The Earth by Lotte Geeven