sound – Amy M. Youngs

Sounds from the Subterrarium

hypernatural — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 19:05:59 +0000

Using a microscope camera and audio/visualization techniques, we are tracking a population of springtails inside a custom-made terrarium. Springtails (collembola) are abundant arthropods, found in soils throughout the world. They are important to soil health, as they graze on bacteria and fungi, disperse spores, and keep the nutrients cycling throughout soil.

To help humans notice their individual interactions, we projected them large and programmed colored dots to share their varying speeds; with blue dots showing their slower movements and red dots showing the fastest.

The sounds are also changing live, based on their movements. We don’t know what the sounds of this soil, or these springtails, are actually like, so we have developed a kind of speculative sonification based on the sounds of a forest. Like forest sounds and like ambient music, soil is present but fades from our notice most of the time. When we do pay attention to the complex life in soil ecosystems, we can be rewarded with a sense of wonder.

Viewers can interact with this system by moving the computer mouse to experience an altered soundscape – and perhaps imagine themselves as a tiny cursor in the world of the springtails.

This project is a collaboration with artists Alena Sun, Brian Trelegan, and David King. We were fortunate to be able to work with David’s amazing glass art crew: Gayle Van Martel, David Foster, Su Fan and Max Kleinmann, in the glass art facility at the Ohio State University.

The work was exhibited in, Those Who Feed Us, an art show celebrating Ohio Soil Health Week, which included Marcia Armstrong, Ken Rinaldo, Mandy Darrington, Adelaine Muth, Eve Warnock, Pelham Johnston, Kim Landsbergen, Janette Knowles, Raman Ebrahimi, Thomas Ellsworth, Daniel Gingerich, Parinaz Naghizadeh, Kyoung Swearingen, Scott Swearingen, and Robyn Wilson.

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INSPIRATIONS:

Springtails
Shadrick Addy and Jian Chen, my co-principal investigators of the Nonhuman Storytellers Generating Impressionistic Story Ecologies project, an interdisciplinary grant project funded by the College of Arts and Humanities and Computer Science Engineering, which gave rise to this offshoot artwork.
The student researchers who worked on the Nonhuman Storytellers Generating Impressionistic Story Ecologies project: Nate Garthwaite, Alena Sun, Ashim Dhakal, Shuning Jiang, Isabel Nixon, and Chenzhuo Tong.
Artists: Julie Freeman, Ken Rinaldo, and Laura Beloff
A Chaos of Delight, informative website featuring soil mesofauna, by macro photographer and writer Andy Murray.

Hydroelectric Invert

hypernatural — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 18:54:13 +0000

A pseudo-waterfall sculpture made of rubber, light, motion and the booming sound of a waterfall. It is inspired by the way in which Niagara Falls is manipulated and constructed to serve humans as both an industrial and natural spectacle. The activation of this sculpture resides in a light switch mounted on the front of the piece, giving the viewer control of this artificial nature experience. Another important feature of this sculpture is its full extension, all the way into the outlet it plugs into. Pointing directly at its source of electricity, it refers back to the natural processes (such as waterfalls) that are used to produce it. This sculpture inverts an outdoor waterfall power source into an indoor, controllable version.

Trophy Waterfall

hypernatural — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 02:13:41 +0000

This interactive sound sculpture is a commemorative nature souvenir. Like a trophy deer head, it functions as both a remembrance of a nature experience and a displayed prize. Just as the deer head is full of plaster and glass eyes, this waterfall contains no water. Instead, the sounds of waterfalls refer to the experience of being there. The viewers of this trophy create their own version of a waterfall experience by playing the five separate touch-activated water sounds. Giving a participant “control” of their own idealized waterfall experience does not change the fact that the experience is trivial compared to that of being at an actual waterfall – though I do wonder how stand-in nature experiences change our subsequent perceptions of the thing represented.

(This sculpture was stolen from Hopkins Hall Gallery in Columbus, Ohio in 2000. Let me know if you see it anywhere.)

Mnemonic Devicive

hypernatural — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:22:28 +0000

The array of devices inside the tire entices viewer participation. As a hand reaches out to it, eerie sounds emanate from the piece. If any of the devices are touched, the sounds responsively change to a dramatic squeal. The experience is intentionally designed to be inscrutable. It is a device that stands to remind us of our individual lack of technological knowledge. As humanity impresses itself with its technological invention, individually we understand very little of it. Even old technology. We may think we understand older technologies, but even the Theremin, which was invented in 1927, is full of invisible forces that seem mysterious and are difficult to explain. I built this Theremin from instructions found in an old Popular Mechanics article. The process of making my own was frustrating, exhilarating and humbling. I hid the electronic instrument inside a tire with buttons, knobs and wires to present the viewer with a semi-familiar interface and an illusory sense of control.