The shores and waters of Lake Superior can change dramatically from day to day. After two days of calm, the lake revolted with waves of ice crashing against the rocky shoreline. I have never heard such a sound and eagerly made a recording. These waves were literally made up of water and densely packed plates of ice. When each wave would crest, shards of ice clattered down the trough of the wave, and when they reached the shore the plates of ice would shatter against the rocks.
Waves of Ice
This is one of my favorite PCM-D50 recordings so far. Once again, there was a very still evening after the snow had fallen. At the shore small rivulets of snow melt dribbled into the lake.
I put the recorder on a rock pointing toward the ensemble of water droplets and captured about six minutes of this musical sound. Here’s one minute and thirty three seconds of what I acquired.
Snow Melting
I rarely experience the near silence of still, late nights in remote areas like the Northern shore of Lake Superior. The quiet was amplified (is that an oxymoron?) by a two inch layer of fresh snow that seemed to absorb the outdoor ambience. The lake was as still as I’ve ever seen it. The combination of these factors made it possible to actually hear the snow falling. You can identify the sound of the snow falling as a high frequency crackling as the flakes touched down on my surroundings. The large wet flakes sound similar to rain. There’s also an irregular, low frequency thumping sound that might be plates of ice gently bumping into each other on the lake.
Snow Falling
Signs of Spring are making themselves heard in Minneapolis. For example, I recorded the sound of snow quickly melting into a storm drain near the Mississippi river in Minneapolis last night. The temperature was approaching fifty degrees Fahrenheit (ten Centigrade) creating a steady stream of water pouring into a grate adjacent to a cobble stone street. The sound was loud enough to capture my attention as I cycled past it, and nearly drowned (no pun intended) out the ambient noise of traffic and a nearby power plant.
Snow Melting into Storm Drain
Ali Momeni has recently posted an article about his and Robin Meier’s installation Strategies for Post-Apocalyptic Computation that was shown at the 2009 Spark Festival. Based on the article it looks as though they have renamed the piece Truce. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Our installation explores reciprocal musical interactions between the mosquito and the computer. The computer produces a stimulus signal to which the living mosquitoes synchronize. Subsequently, the computer sings a third voice that responds to the musical inflections of the mosquitoes’ buzz. These three voices come in and out of harmony depending on the mosquitoes propensity to maintain its sync with the stimulus signal.
I made three or four visits to this fascinating installation during the festival. Here’s a segment from a recording of the piece that I made during one of my visits. To see some well produced video of the installation please visit the original article.
Brief Recording of Truce