Terrella
Michaela Gleave, Amanda Cole and Warren Armstrong
2022
Self-generating music app, live data, projection screen, seating elements, ionisation unit
Installation view: University of Queensland Art Museum. Photographs: Josef Rickli
Terrella is an immersive sound installation that ‘plays’ the Earth’s electromagnetic field in real time. Using live data from geomagnetic monitoring stations across the planet, the project sonifies the frequencies of the Earth, listening to its fluctuations and turning them into music. The work is a transdisciplinary collaboration with composers, designers, and data technicians, involving scientific partners from Geoscience Australia, the South African Space Agency, the British Geological Society and INTERMAGNET, a global network of geomagnetic observatories. Terrella takes the form of a shifting mesh of sound and imagery that connects with the tremendous energetic forces of nature. A reverberant 5-channel soundscape makes audible electromagnetic flows otherwise undetectable to humans, allowing us to hear solar storms and bear witness to the phenomena that create auroras. Data visualisations progress through waves, electron flows and fizzing particles in a tonal palette derived from the core of the Earth to the outer edges of space. The air is subtly charged with negative ions that cleanse and purify the atmosphere. The Earth’s electromagnetic field is a circuit of energy that surrounds the planet, protecting it from solar radiation. One of the four fundamental forces, electromagnetism is a physics that is separate from human concerns, and an underlying substrate of reality. Many organisms including bacteria, salmon, migratory birds, bees, and butterflies attune to it for orientation, navigation and survival.
Terrella reminds us that Earth is an active agent, alive within a networked planetary system. This sensorial and affective installation shifts our focus beyond anthropocentric concerns. In the age of climate crisis, the work calls for embodied listening, connecting us in sympathetic resonance with the energetic vibrations of the planet.
Text by Anna Briers
PROJECT CREDITS
Lead artist: Michaela Gleave
Composer: Amanda Cole
Programmer: Warren Armstrong
Design: Olivia King
Key scientific collaborators:
Ian Schofield (Athabasca University)
Martin Connors (Athabasca University)
Andrew Lewis (Geoscience Australia)
Simon Flower (British Geological Society)
Hiroaki Toh (Kyoto University)
Johnathan Ward (SANSA)
Kate Niemantinga (SANSA)
Roman Leonhardt (ZAMG)
Oleg Kusonsky (Russian Academy of Sciences)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The artists would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
This project builds on the previous work Coronal Mass, which was initially commissioned by the Salamanca Arts Centre as part of The In Between for Dark Mofo 2019.
CONTRIBUTING ORGANISATIONS
The geomagnetic information represented in this project relies on data collected at magnetic observatories. We thank the national institutes that support them and INTERMAGNET for promoting high standards of magnetic observatory practice (intermagnet.org).
The project gratefully acknowledges the Athabasca University Faculty of Science and Technology. Athabasca University’s AUTUMNX magnetometer network is funded through the Canadian Space Agency / Geospace Observatory (GO) Canada program. (autumn.athabascau.ca)
Geomagnetic data from the Alice Springs (ASP), Canberra (CNB), Casey (CSY), Charters Towers (CTA), Cocos (Keeling) Islands (CKI), Gingin (GNG), Kakadu (KDU), Learmonth (LRM), Macquarie Island (MCQ) and Mawson (MAW) observatories provided © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2020 under the CC-BY-4.0 license. (ga.gov.au)
Geomagnetic data from Tsumeb, Keetmanshoop, SANAE, Hartebeeshoek and Hermanus is courtesy of the South African National Space Agency. (sansa.org.za)
