Monday July 12, 2004

My wife and I visited Mass MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) out in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts last week. There were several sound-oriented exhibits that I enjoyed. This installment covers a piece called Music for a Quarry.

Swiss-born artist Walter Fahndrich's Music for a Quarry is installed at the nearby Hoosac Marble Quarry and comprises a set of ten speakers spaced around the face of the quarry which play a set of clear tones for fifteen minutes at the onset of astronomical sunset every evening. The volume and timing of the tones melded very nicely with the background sounds of nearby rushing water and the end-of-the-day calling of birds as the sun went down. It was very contemplative.

Here's my first attempt at posting a sound sample. Suggestions on better formats, etc., gratefully accepted. This was recorded with a Sony MZ-R900 minidisc recorder using a Sony ECM-ZS90 microphone. I did some noise removal and amplification using Audacity 1.2.1 to compensate for forgetting to record with high sensitivity settings on the MD recorder. 8 kHz mono WAV and AIF formats.