Documentation Video: https://vimeo.com/user2308965

Sonic Spells is a 3D audio installation hosted by EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center) in Troy, NY. This installation takes a deeper look at the materials in electronics which have been wielded to fulfill the inventions of those who dominate our sonic experiences and hopes to inspire a reclaiming of these raw materials by other artists/musicians in order to widen the spectrum of representation in the sonic arts. The title of this piece offers a safe sonic space, made with care, surrounded by the utterances of pre-speech – to the voiceless. Salt vibrated by subwoofers act as a protective force, to envoke safety. This installation was made with hand grown Epsom Salt crystals, referencing Rochelle Salt, an electricity transducing material employed by the early technology of phonographs, sonar, and microphones, to name a few. This particular crystal’s inherent properties and lattice structure expand and contract under mechanical stress producing the phenomenon of piezoelectricity. Wielded Rochelle salt crystals were used in phonographs and gramophones as the “pick up” device that transduced the vibration of the needle’s movements, to electricity, which could produce or record sound. Remembering the very materials employed as our interpreters of sound (in this case a particular type of crystal) hopes to inspire the idea that sound is inherently political before it hits the ear. Certainly, we can understand this when referencing our age of misinformation. Who makes the instruments we use to listen? Who has access to these instruments? What binaries are given favor to the sounds that are chosen to be amplified and repeated?