Climate Catastrophe as Environmental Music: The Aral Sea

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

This paper presents a prospective cross-disciplinary project dedicated to unearthing audible traces of human industry by constructing a sound installation in the Aral Sea, Uzbekistan. The installation will provide necessary data to correlate the destructive salinity and temperatures of the Aral Sea with the water’s electric conductivity. This information will be used as a primary input for a generative music installment using sound synthesis; a roundtrip voltage-to-voltage system. The concept of the Anthropocene – a proposed geological epoch in which humans are directly interfering with the planetary archive – serves as framework for a discussion of how auditory mediation unveils an experimental opportunity to engage the ominous reality of climate change in a constructive manner, making the sound ecology of the world not only archival, but procedural. The Anthropocene represents itself in electronic music by challenging the general conception of environmental music, a genre that now has very different connotations than at the time of its origin.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2019 International Computer Music Conference, New York City, NY, USA
Number of pages4
PublisherMichigan Publishing
Publication date2019
Pages76-79
ISBN (Electronic)0984527486
Publication statusPublished - 2019

ID: 365876075