Audio from 2 oscillators combining 3 meteorite resistors, 2 pencil pine capacitors, and a tarn water conductor, with gentle reverb added, but otherwise unprocessed, the natural staggered rhythms arising from the interaction between the tangle of elements used in the circuits.

Meteorites and Pencil Pines

Last summer I saw a meteorite light up the night sky where I live, high up on the Central Plateau. I wanted to go out and find it, but it was dark and the whole area is marshy and I would have got totally lost. I imagined what it must be like for the meteorite, to come from the deep vastness of space, to land on the plateau, and what kind of conversations would happen between this space rock and the local pencil pines, and with the tarn water, and the wallabies. What would that conversation between this exotic other and the local community sound like? So I arranged some meteorite samples as resistors and inductors, some shavings of pencil pines layered into capacitors, a vial of tarn water as a resistor, and wired them all into two oscillator circuits, so that I could listen in to the microscopic conversations. The oscillations (sounds) in the circuits arise from interactions within and between the materials - across the grains of metal and stone in the meteorite as it alternately conducts and resists electricity - in the magnetic flux as it pushes and pulls through the layered structure of meteoric iron - along the woody fibres of the pencil pine as it stores and releases electricity…. The electrons jostle about and navigate through these microscopic landscapes hidden deep within matter, sonifying these internal worlds and revealing the intrinsic character of each material.

Meteorite samples, pencil pine, tarn water, schmitt trigger oscillators, various electronics.  Meteorite samples include Gibeon, NWA 15842, and NEA 067.

Installed in University of Tasmania’s Inveresk Library, curated by the amazing Zara Sully as part of the University of Tasmania x Sawtooth ARI collaboration, paired with Sara Morawetz’s work All My Anxieties. Located on Level 3 of the library.