14 Feb 2012
The pioneering installation has been 30 years in the making and explores our relationship with the distant past through 3D sound.
Arup is showcasing ‘LandSeaAir’, an exhibition by Charlie Morrow at Phase 2, 8 Fitzroy Street, from 17th February to 4th May 2012.
The installation explores our relationships to the environment and to its ecological and cultural changes, through the medium of 3D sound. The sonic journey takes listeners back 400 million years, when the first living organisms evolved to develop the sense of hearing. It continues through six different time periods and is accompanied by a silent movie Geo Portrait Earth from 1999 by American filmmaker Gina Angelone, which describes the landscape and the changing global climate throughout the different eras.
The 3D sound is amplified from above and below the listener creating a cube of sound within the exhibition space with loungers and silk screens enhancing the experience of immersion. The installation includes the Time Spiral Cosmic Clock, a sculpture of pumped water and air bubbles evoking the passing of time, designed especially for the exhibition by leading Finnish industrial designer Hannu Kähönen, whose recent work has focussed on material-based product development and environmental issues.
Charlie Morrow has been developing and refining the 3D sound method for the past 30 years in recognition of the importance of sound as the first sense that humans develop. He was inspired by the 1960s research of sound pioneers, like mathematician Michael Gerzon, in the field of ambisonics (recording and replay techniques, using multi-channel mixing technology).
Charlie Morrow began his collaboration with Arup in 1998 when the firm opened its SoundLab in New York. Projects together have included the development of the MorrowSound® True3D Cube presented at the New Sound New York festival in 2004 and Audubon’s Aviary at the New-York Historical Society from 2005 to 2007.
Further sound projects by Morrow include a solo show in MUU Gallery, Helsinki in 2004, and sound installations for the XX Winter Olympic Games, Turin in 2006, and The Arctic Studies Center, Anchorage Museum, which was awarded the IDEA environmental prize in 2011.