Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Grounded in the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing in telegraph lines and in the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard in telephone lines, the book moves through the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s, when the composer Alvin Lucier worked with the “natural electromagnetic sounds” present from “brainwaves to outer space,” through th ... More

Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Grounded in the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing in telegraph lines and in the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard in telephone lines, the book moves through the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s, when the composer Alvin Lucier worked with the “natural electromagnetic sounds” present from “brainwaves to outer space,” through the urban electromagnetism in the conceptual art of Robert Barry, to the energy-scavenging drawings and antennas by the artist Joyce Hinterding. From the sounds of auroras at high latitudes and atmospheric electricity in the mountains to the underground music of earthquakes and nuclear explosions and to music bounced off the moon and the sounds of the sun, Earth Sound Earth Signal rethinks energy at a global scale through detailed discussions of artists and scientists such as Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, James Turrell, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Paul DeMarinis, Semiconductor, Thomas Ashcraft, Katie Paterson, Edmond Dewan, Ludwik Liszka, and many others.