Displacing Vibrations is a multi-media exhibition by artist Wendy Wischer, in collaboration with geophysicist Jeffrey Moore. The exhibition creates a unique experience of sound, sculpture, installation, video and non-traditional drawing, while shifting fragmented angles of perception through making the invisible visible and the inaudible audible, allowing sensorial enhancement of what appears familiar by providing new ways of experiencing, enriched observation and new forms of interpretation.
In December 2017, less than one year after being designated as a National Monument, the boundaries of Bears Ears were cut by 85 percent. In the same stroke, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in place since 1996 and hosting world class natural resources, was reduced by 47 percent. With the reductions, 115 natural rock arches were stripped of federal protection. These arches evolved in isolation over thousands of years in one of the most remote, wild, and challenging landscapes of the American West. Recent human encroachment and planned extractive actives now threatens to place increasing stress on these arches. These natural sculptures, formed over millennia through erosion, are in urgent need of protection and prudent conservation management supporting their long-term preservation.
Natural arches are constantly vibrating; like a guitar string plucked by the wind or background drone of the Earth’s energy, they each vibrate with a unique set of tones set by their geometry and material properties. These tones represent a voice, a hum previously unknown to humans because it occurs at inaudible frequencies and is too subtle to feel. Speeding up ambient vibration recordings generated with ultra sensitive seismometers now makes this voice audible. Beyond a new sensory experience, vibration recordings also offer experimental means to assess structural change, concepts established in engineering and now applied for this first time to monitor the structural health of rock formations. Arches are humming their health and we’ve only begun to hear what they have to say.
Photo credit: Amelia Walchli