A Tiny Machine
Watch this one with headphones for the full effect.
This is a two-part project for an Audio Art course in the Time Arts program at Northern Illinois University. The soundtrack is a musique concrète piece with a focus on Foley sound — except for the samples of spoken word and explosions, everything was originally recorded and mixed. The second part of the assignment was to create a synesthesia visual element that drew on the timbre and quality of the sound.
This project is a meditation on nuclear energy. Almost a century since the discovery of atomic power, we have not yet succumbed to the threat of man-made apocalypse, nor has the futurist dream of a uranium-powered utopia come true. While it is a nearly infinite source of both energy and destruction, the mechanics of the subatomic world are still not fully understood. To me, it is fascinating to wonder what brief, inexplicable sight occurs at the moment of fission. Beneath the implosion plates, within a perfect sphere of enriched plutonium, the heavy atoms are compressed. They pack tighter and tighter, until the bonds that hold the world together cannot hold — an atom shatters. Within the dense core the particles collide with the nuclei of other atoms, collapsing the sphere unto itself and setting off a chain reaction that releases the power of the sun.
The audio elements used in this piece are meant to invoke an emotional response, as well as carry a vague narrative of experiencing a bomb detonation. The visuals parallel this intent. It could be thought of as a waking dream, starting with visuals and sounds that are ambiguous, even beautiful at times, before abruptly falling into a nightmare. I am not a musician, but decided to use actual musical instruments (viola, guitar, drums, cymbals) in order to convey emotion more effectively than with sound effects alone. My lack of training, in this context, helped me treat the instruments abstractly. I focused on matching the timbre of each sound to a stage of the surreal experience, and in turn use a visual that resonated emotionally.
This is a reflection on fear and awe that I can only imagine. My generation mocks the use of a color-coded scale to indicate terrorist threats; my mother and father were shown a cartoon of a turtle who tells them that everything they know and love might be destroyed at any moment, and their best plan to survive is to hide under their desks with their hands over their heads.
When I searched through the archives of government films about nuclear weapons and radiation, every one contained at least a few sequences of beautifully rendered animation. These cartoons varied in style and message, but all had one element in common: horror. Sometimes it was the intent of the animator to shock the audience, but most of them are clearly meant to be informational or even reassuring. Imagining my parents watching these films, glancing out the window to see if the “Red Menace” was about to strike, I’m not sure how their reactions could have been anything but screaming and ducking under the nearest piece of furniture.
With hindsight, the fear of nuclear annihilation seems surreal, even quaint — like a monster evaporating when the closet light comes on. While that doesn’t mean the threat was non-existent, I believe it can give us perspective about those times of hysterical, paralyzing fear. If nothing else, there will always be an animator willing to visualize your horror in technicolor.
Some fun, trivial information:
- The sound of the building collapsing is a recording of ice being knocked off the side of my freezer.
- The entire soundtrack to the fission sequence was sampled from four arbitrary notes in a recording of my roommate practicing her viola, pitch-shifted up and down perfect fourths to simulate chords and doubled up against a convoluted version to make them sound more orchestral.
- The scurrying noise near the end of the video is a recording of a moth trapped inside a plastic bag with a microphone.
Video sourced from:
‘Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation,’ USAF Special Weapons Project (1950)
‘Duck and Cover,’ Federal Civil Defense Administration (1951)
‘Stay Safe, Stay Strong: The Facts About Nuclear Weapons,’ USAF (1960)
‘Radiological Defense,’ U.S. Office of Civil Defense (1961)
Sources courtesy of the Prelinger Archives.
