Jacob Kirkegaard: Transmission

If for some reason were to lose these [sound] files then my entire life work, contained only on this hard drive, would be lost.¹⁴

Recorded sound is the primary component in the sound art of Jacob Kirkegaard, in a similar way that recorded sights are for a photographer. The mode of the recordings’ presentation, such as installation or album, is arguably secondary to the captured sounds—be they field recordings or sounds from the human ear itself. For Kirkegaard the act of creating sonic materials is an intensely time- and place-specific undertaking, since the sounds he works with in his installations and albums come from recordings that he captures at particular locations and dates using carefully selected equipment. In Transmission (2017), Kirkegaard worked with University of Utah professor and seismologist Jeff Moore, who assisted him in creating seismic recordings of various stone arches in Arizona and Utah (fig. 6). Over the course of several days they made long-duration recordings of very low-frequency vibrations, along with simultaneous recordings using air microphones to capture the sounds above and around the arches.

In determining the best environment for his installation at Dartmouth, Kirkegaard wanted to capture a sense of distance between two discrete soundscapes. The four-story atrium of the Sherman Fairchild Physical Sciences Center (fig. 7), with its rough concrete walls and large panes of glass, was good fit in terms of the artistic concept and acoustic requirements for the work. Specifically, it was important to the artist that the sounds were immersive yet not overwhelming. To do this, he deployed eight speakers in total, with four on the bottom floor and four on the top floor of the atrium. The four loudspeakers located on the first floor consisted of custom-fabricated speaker cabinets with single, broad-spectrum speaker drivers mounted on top. The intended effect was to project subterranean sounds upward into the atrium in such a way as to interact with the architecture of the space. Four additional powered speakers were located on the top floor of the atrium mounted on light pole structures. Their purpose was to distribute terranean sounds across the top of the atrium; at times, these could be audible from the first floor. In this way, Kirkegaard addressed sound in terms of how it might operate in relation to the architecture itself, as a metaphor for sonic materials upon the earth’s surface and below it. Transmission became less about observing a single object or sound, and more about generating an immersive experience that enveloped the listener. At no time was the sound too loud or overwhelming, however. Instead, long stretches of silence prompted the visitor to attune to the existing sounds of the building, such as the elevator motor, doors opening and closing, and hums from the nearby cooling system. In those moments, one was suddenly returned from Transmission’s sonic immersion to the plainness of day-to-day life on a college campus, yearning to be summoned back to the wild, remote sounds of the desert. The sounds, sometimes ominous rumbles and at other times falling and rising tones, like otherworldly songs, moved around the atrium in phantasm-like trajectories.