SOLID SOUND

2010|Sound, light, Teethphones™.

Commissioned by Moon Life Concept Store - an exhibition of prototypes and ideas for life on the Moon. Supported by Fonds BKVB - Amsterdam.

 

Life in Vacuum
Living on the Moon for generations, humanity will adapt to life without atmosphere and oxygen. Human beings will mutate in such a way that they will be able to live in vacuum. Their organs will change and breathing no longer will be necessary in order to live. Since there is no sound in vacuum, they will live in total silence. They will not speak to each other, and instead communicate in a way that is unimaginable to us now. The phenomena of sound traveling through air, which used to be so important for communication, the formation of language and identity of the Self, the Other and the environment on the Earth, will be absent on the Moon.

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Sound on the Moon will instead be captured in the vibrations of solid objects and things, and the limits of these vibrating things will hence be the limits of sound propagation. If Moon humans will want to experience the sensation of sound as we hear it on Earth, they will have to use recorded or transmitted sound to vibrate their skulls. They will use small vibrating transducers, which they will bite like a lollipop in order to enable the sound vibrations to propagate from the transducer through teeth and skull into their inner ear. Their mouth will turn into a hearing organ and their head will become a vibrating loudspeaker, through which they will be able to hear. They will call this device Teethphones™.

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For them, listening to any recorded sound from a distant past will form a mental link to their earthly ancestors - a link to a lost dimension of life which formed them so significantly. Their relation to the recorded sounds from Earth and human voice will not be unlike the relation we have towards the Moon in present times. For them, these sounds will exist far away in space and time, and yet, they will appear so close, more than close - as they will appear only inside one's head as sound vibrations of one's skull. This relation to sound will create an intimate and nostalgic thread between the Moon humans and the breath of life as we know it today, serving them as a recorded memory as well as a vehicle for mythical interpretations of their Earthly origins.