Sonic Explorations With Earthquake Data

Abstract

The composition ``underground sounds'' - an interdisciplinary project including a concert piece as its artistic element - deals with the phenomenon of the constantly moving, therefore resonating earth and is based on data taken from an earthquake which reached 7.8 on the Richter scale and triggered a tsunami on April 1st, 2007 close to the Solomon Islands in the Southwestern Pacific. The data from several related seismic events was provided via a real-time data server belonging to the GEOFON network of seismic stations and converted to audio data using programs specifically developed for that purpose ``underground sounds'' is not an audification; the seismometers records were used as raw material for several applications of signal processing effects. The four parts of the composition concentrate on different characteristics of seismic events including sounds of the same seismic event recorded by different stations, the filtered harmonic sounds of the measuring instruments and the output of the separation of the earthquake's impulse-like components from the earth's constant movements, each used as separate instruments in the composition.