As part of the exhibition WITHIN/Infinite Ear, Council presented a collection of recordings of rare and inaudible phenomena displayed in a sonic café called the White Cat. While ordering a drink, one could experience more than thirty different recordings, of such things as: plant decomposition, the snapping sound of pistol shrimps or the collision of two black holes.

1. COMPOST
Thomas Tilly

What we hear in this recording are the movements of insects, worms and probably a circulation of gas generated by the bioturbation process, which is a process where sedimentary deposits are moved or disturbed by insects and plants. In the external background, one can discern the road and planes flying by. The recording was conducted near a village in the West of France, and a couple of hydrophones were pushed into the compost. Hydrophones are types of microphones used for underwater recording or for listening to underwater sounds.

2. INSIDE AN OLIVE TREE OF ELEUSIS
Tarek Atoui and Chris Watson

This olive tree is close to Demeter’s temple. Chris Watson placed a contact microphone under the bark of the tree. This was done in Elefsina as part of Tarek Atoui’s ongoing project I/E in May 2015.

A Short Note on Eleusis (Elefsina – 15 km of Athens), Tarek Atoui and Chris Watson. The settlement of Eleusis was founded in 2000 B.C. From as early as 600 BC up until the fourth century AD, Eleusis was the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries or the Mysteries of Demeter and Kore. These Mysteries revolved around a belief that there was a hope for life after death for those who were initiated. The central myth of the Mysteries was Demeter’s quest for her lost daughter Persephone who had been abducted by Hades.

3. MONA MINAS GOLD MINE IN COLOMBI
Carl Michael von Hausswolff, 2012

The Mona Minas gold mine is located in the town of Remedios, north of Medellin, which is famous for its gold and silver mines as well as cattle production. Access was permitted by the owner. Carl Michael von Hausswolff used emission spectroscopy for this recording, which is “a technique that examines the wavelengths of photons emitted by atoms or molecules.” Each element (carbon, gold, lithium,…) emits a unique set of discrete wavelengths imperceptible to the human ear. Spectroscopic techniques make them audible, and the sound is used to study the elemental composition of matter.

4. PLANT DECOMPOSITION (EXCERPT, 15)
Matthieu Saladin, 2016

Recorded with a Zoom H4n and two contact microphones, the sounds capture a compost head at Pen-bé, Assérac, France, on June 5th 2016.

5. EVAPORATING PUDDLE (EXCERPT, 15)
Matthieu Saladin, 2016

Using a sound device 702 and two waterproof contact microphones, the artist recorded the sounds of an evaporating puddle at Pen-bé, Assérac, France, on June 5th 2016.

6. EROSION OF A ROCK (EXCERPT, 15)
Matthieu Saladin, 2016

Recorded with a Zoom H4n and two contact microphones at low tide. Pen-bé, Assérac, France, on 5 June 2016.

7. BASEVUOVDI
Morten Norbye Halvorsen

The recording was done on an alluvial gold field located in the north of Norway in Basevuovdi. The geologic term alluvium is described as an “unconsolidated terrestrial sediment composed of sorted or unsorted sand, gravel, and clay that has been deposited by water.” The site is also a holy Sami site the artist stayed in over the years. The Sami “are an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi, and are the only indigenous people of Scandinavia recognized and protected under the international conventions of indigenous peoples, and are hence the northernmost indigenous people of Europe.”

Dictionary of Geologic Terms

8. CEMENTERIO DEL NORTE, MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY
Carl Michael von Hausswolff

This cemetery is where sailors from the German cruiser Graf Spee are buried. The Graf Spee had been involved in commerce raiding in the Atlantic once WWII broke out and was later involved in the first naval battle of WWII called the Battle of the River Plate. The Graf Spee was hunted down by the British Admiralty in December 1939 and was badly damaged when it came ashore Montevideo in Uruguay.

9. IN THE CALLICHORON WELL — BUILT IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE FIFTH CENTURY B.C.
Tarek Atoui and Chris Watson

Demeter came to this well and rested. The four daughters of the local king Keleos found her and took her to their palace where she taught their brother Triptolemus, the art of agriculture. Then, from him, the rest of Greece learned to plant and reaped crops. Ever since and until WWII, this well remained in use and kept on providing water to Elefsina. This was recorded by Chris Watson with omnidirectional microphones in Elefsina as part of Tarek Atoui’s ongoing project I/E in May 2015.

10. INSIDE A STONE OF DEMETER’S TEMPLE BUILT IN 650 B.C.
Tarek Atoui and Chris Watson

Keleos, king of Eleusis, was one of the original priests of Demeter and one of the first people to learn the secret rites and mysteries of Demeter’s cult. He ordered his citizens to build a rich shrine to Demeter in Eleusis. Chris Watson placed a contact microphone beneath a stone of the temple and recorded the sound. This recording was made in Elefsina as part of Tarek Atoui’s ongoing project I/E in May 2015.

11. LLYN CWM LLWCH
Morten Norbye Halvorsen, 2015

Llyn Cwm Llwch is the best preserved glacial lake in the South of Wales and sits at the head of the Cwm Llwch valley — part of the Brecon Beacons Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Geological Conservation Review (GCR) site. There are many legends surrounding this lake and the fairies that live on an invisible island on top of it. The recording was made with a hydrophone.

12. THE TUNNEL TO THE UNDERWORLD
Tarek Atoui and Chris Watson

Persephone was gathering flowers with friends when she was seized by Hades, god of death and the underworld, who took her to his kingdom. Demeter searched for her daughter and in an effort to coerce Zeus to allow her return, she caused a terrible drought in which the people suffered and starved. This deprived the gods of sacrifice and worship, and Zeus relented, allowing Persephone to return to her mother. Every year, for four months during the dry Greek summer, Persephone remained with Hades — a period during which plants were threatened with drought. At the beginning of autumn when the seeds are planted, Persephone followed a tunnel that brought her back from the underworld to her mother and the cycle of growth began anew. This recording was made inside the tunnel of Hades by Chris Watson with omnidirectional microphones. This recording was made in Elefsina as part of Tarek Atoui’s ongoing project I/E in May 2015.

13. AQUATIC INSECT
Thomas Tilly

This was recorded inside the moat of an old castle located in a protected area in Sanzay, a village in the West of France. The type of aquatic insect could not be identified from its sound — only a few have been identified so far and work has just begun on a scientific program investigating these sounds. What is certain, however, regarding the role of light in the recording, is that the frequency varied when the sun were appeared or disappeared. The sound gets higher when the sun shines on the water surface and drops when clouds obscure the area.

14. FLUX OF WORKER BEES
Eric La Casa

In this recording bees enter and leave the entrance of the beehive.
Lacan was arguing that what the bees produce are messages or codes, a form of communication that uses dance and body movement. Recorded in Saint-Denis, near Paris, France and at the beehives of Olivier Darné. See Hearing Matters, item (18).

15. LIMPETS, LE FRIOUL, MARSEILLE
Gareth Lee Paterson, April 2010

The recording captures the distant snapping sounds of pistol shrimps and in the foreground, the rasp- ing sounds of limpets as they graze for algae using their radula — a tooth-lined tongue. Limpets are aquatic snails that are covered with conical shells. Gareth Lee Paterson’s self-made hydrophones were also used for this recording. In this case, recording took place on the limestone surfaces of a small tidal pool at the end of a creek on the island of Raton- neau, Le Frioul, Marseille. This was recorded dur- ing the production of sound installation, Bouillion de sons Frioulais, for Festival MIMI.

16. MICRONECTA AND RAIN, AGDEN RESI- DENCE, S. YORKSHIRE
Gareth Lee Paterson, Summer 2009

Using Gareth Lee Paterson’s self-made hydro- phones, the track records the dry crackling of rain fall upon a water surface and the calls of a species of micronecta, a small aquatic insect, similar to water boatmen. They are species “belonging to the ge- nus Micronecta (Corixidae, Micronectinae) [and] are known to use sound for pair formation. Only males produce species-specific sounds that attract females for mating [as] males can synchronize their calls generating a chorus.” Fish and a barking dog are also occasionally heard in this recording. It was recorded during a walk with Keith Rowe (former AMM member and English free improvisation tab- letop guitarist and painter) prior to a recording ses- sion in the afternoon.

17. PANAPONERA
Thomas Tilly

The high sounds heard in this recording are alarm calls produced by Panaponeras, also known as bul- let ants. Living mainly in rainforests, they are a large species of ants notorious for their highly ven- omous and painful sting (the most painful among all insect bites). The Sateré-Mawé people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their in- itiation rites to become a warrior. What one hears in the background sounds like footsteps but is in fact the sound of rain. To record these, professional cardioid microphones were used. By getting closer to the ants (though not too close) one can hear their dialogues and calls.

18. PISTOL SHRIMPS
Chris Chafe and Greg Niemeyer, 11 September 2001

These snapping shrimps where captured by record- ist Michael Gurevich with hydrophones at Monte- rey Bay in California. These shrimps are known as Alpheus heterochaelis, or pistol shrimps. Research has come to discover that the sounds they produce orig- inate from the collapse of a cavitation bubble that the shrimps create to stun and hunt plankton and sea creatures; “during the rapid snapper claw closure a high-velocity water jet is emitted from the claw with a speed exceeding cavitation conditions.” Pistol Shrimps, Chris Chafe and Greg Niemeyer, 11 September 2001. The snapping shrimp com- petes with much larger animals such as the sperm whale and beluga whale for the title of loudest an- imal in the sea.

19. TADPOLES, KING’S WOOD, KENT
Gareth Lee Paterson, Spring 2010

This is another recording of rasping sounds of many tiny mouths as tadpoles chew upon and around Gareth Lee Paterson’s hydrophones. Tad- poles are the larval stages in the life cycle of am- phibians such as frogs and toads. They are “able to make the calls as early as three days after hatching and can do so both in the water and out of the water.” Using self-made hydrophones, Gareth Lee Paterson recorded the tadpoles during a residency with Stour Valley Arts, King’s Wood, Challock, near Ashford, Kent and formed a part of the instal- lation titled Elemental Fields.

20. TROPICAL BATS
Thomas Tilly

The sounds of bats typically range between 30 000 and 45 000 Hz (ultrasounds that the human ear cannot perceive). Thomas Tilly used an ultrasonic detector that shifts these inaudible frequencies to a hearing range, and captured the sounds of the bats’ sonar and their system of echolocation. Unidentified Insect, River Cocker, Gareth Lee Paterson.
In this recording, we can discern a variety of reg- ular and irregular ticking sounds produced by aquatic plants in a river, accompanied by a series of short glissandi-like calls. It is not entirely clear what is producing these calls but they are likely to be produced by an aquatic insect amongst the plants. Gareth Lee Paterson used self-made hydro- phones to record in a freshwater river called The Cocker, located on the outskirts of the town of Cockermouth in Cumbria, UK. Close to the youth hostel at Double Mills, there is a bend where the river turns 130 degrees to the South East. There is a deep pool and shallows in which small thickets of aquatic plants grow.

21. VIBRATING BODIES
Eric La Casa

Recorded in Saint-Denis, near Paris, France, this recording captures the vibrating sounds of bees in- side the beehives of Olivier Darné. With his hands inside the beehive, Eric La Casa let himself be guided by sensing the vibrations of the bees in his fingers in order to record the sound.

22. THE COLLISION OF TWO BLACK HOLES
(20 milliseconds looped over 3min) LIGO

Physicists have recently announced the discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space- time that were first anticipated by Albert Einstein a century ago. On 14 September 2015, after 25 years of perfecting a set of highly sensitive instruments (LIGO – Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) the phenomenon detected was the collision of two black holes. Using the world’s most sophisticated detector, scientists Kip Thorne and Ronald Drever at CalTech and MIT listened for 20 thousandths of a second as the two giant black holes, one 35 times the mass of the sun, the other slightly smaller, circled around each other. The analysis of the sound’s pitch and amplitude informed them how the black holes collided by cir- cling each other 30 times a second. By the end of the 20 millisecond snatch of data, they had accel- erated to 250 times a second before the final colli- sion and a dark, violent merger. Through convert- ing wave patterns into sound, gravitational wave astronomy, an emerging branch of observational astronomy, is now listening to the universe and opening new ways in our understanding of space.

23. UNIDENTIFIED PHENOMENON IN LONG WIRE, TIMBLE INGS N. YORKSHIRE
Gareth Lee Paterson

This is a recording of a cluster of metallic rustlings and scrapings accompanied by a series of rising and falling call-like sounds. Contact microphones were used to make this recording because of their abili- ty to record audio vibrations through contact with solid objects. The long wire was the top part of a fence around rough pasture at a Timble Ings plan- tation in North Yorkshire, UK. There was no vis- ible cause for the sound but it is possible the wire was acting as a radio aerial receiver for very low frequency radio signals, in which case the source for the radio could have been almost anywhere in the atmosphere. This was conducted on a record- ing trip with Coryn R.R. Smethurst.

24. SPHERICS
Jacob Kirkegaard, 2016

Spherics is a Very Low Frequency (VLF) recording of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, also called natural radio. Natural radio is a term coined by Cal- ifornia researcher Michael Mideke in the 1980s. It “describes naturally occurring electromagnetic (ra- dio) signals emanating from lightning storms, auro- ra (The Northern and Southern Lights), and Earth’s magnetic-field (the magnetosphere) […] Unlike sound waves which are vibrations of air molecules that our ears are sensitive to, natural radio waves are vibrations of electric and magnetic energy (radio waves). Although they occur at the same frequencies as sound, they cannot be listened to without a fair- ly simple radio receiver to convert the natural radio signals directly into sound.” Done in the dark and cold landscape of Northern Iceland, this recording captures the electromagnetic activity from the solar winds. Kirkegaard used a home-built electromag- netic receiver that was used for a sound installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark.

25. SUN with DIRECTION: 16h24 (short)
Minoru Sato

This recording captures the light conditions on the surface of water using digital video technology and a “solar cell camera.”. The sound is excerpted from Sa- to’s project titled FACT of RECORDING FACT.

26. SUN with REFLECTION: 10h22
Minoru Sato

This recording captures the light conditions on the surface of water using digital video technology and a “solar cell camera”. The sound is excerpted from Sato’s project titled FACT of RECORDING FACT.

27. BUØY HARBOR
Morten Norbye Halvorsen , 2015

This was recorded using a hydrophone at the harbor in Buøy, an island in the borough of Hundvåg in the city of Stavanger in Norway. The track contains sounds produced during the building of the Hund- våg tunnel located between 60 to 90 meters below the seabed, and what we hear includes sounds of drilling, dumper trucks, and one of the hourly blasts.

28. EURIPUS STRAIT
Jacob Kirkegaard , 2016

This is an underwater recording of the world’s nar- rowest strait between the mainland in Boeotia (cen- tral Greece) and the Greek island Euboea in the Ae- gean Sea. The principal port in this area is Chalcis and is located at the strait’s narrowest point. The current in the strait is extremely strong and turns the opposite direction a few times a day. It is estimated that the flow can go up to 12 km/h. Using a hydro- phone, the artist recorded this sound as part of an artist residency in Greece called Sonic Topographies.

29. FUKUSHIMA
Jacob Kirkegaard, 2016

This recording captures the vast and empty land- scape in Fukushima, Japan. Surrounded by moun- tains and a dark pine forest, the landscape was cold and steeped in dense snow at the time of the record- ing. An acoustic omnidirectional microphone was used to record this for an audio-visual work titled Stigma, created for the Mori Art Museum in Japan.

30. INTERIOR RESPIRATION
Eric La Casa

The sounds one hears in this recording were captured by a tiny omnidirectional microphone, which was protected by a latex condom and inserted in the throat of a man in the middle of the anechoic chamber of the IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustic Music) in Paris, France. An anechoic chamber is a space conceived to com- pletely absorb reflections of either sound or electro- magnetic waves.

31. STROMBOLI
Morten Norbye Halvorsen, 2012

This is a recording of a single volcanic eruption on Stromboli island, which contains one of the three active volcanoes in Italy. The island is located off the north coast of Sicily in the Tyrrhenian Sea and the artist employed a tape recorder from a helipad near the town of Sciara in Sicily to record the eruption.

32. THE TSAR BELL
Chris Chafe and Greg Niemeyer, 10 April 2016

The Russian Tsar Bell is the largest confirmed bell ever cast at over 200 tons. But in 1732, before it was ever struck, this Goliath of bells broke. Its parts have been on display in the Kremlin ever since. With computer simulations, a team of University of California, Berkeley, Stanford, and University of Michigan researchers (Greg Niemeyer, John Gran- zow, Romain Michon, and Chris Chafe) created a virtual model of the bell and had it ring for the very first time.

33. THE TUV BULLROARER
circa 2800 cal. BC.

The Tuv bullroarer is a Stone Age sound instru- ment, a 6,4cm long propeller-blade-shaped artefact of polished slate recovered in 1991, at a site from the Younger Stone Age close to Saltstraumen near Bodø in Northern Norway. It is the oldest known sound instrument from Norway. Bullroarers have been used as musical instruments, but are frequent- ly applied in rituals, often as important instruments in the communication with super- natural worlds. The sound is produced by vibrations as the blade rotates in the air.