Yuri Suzuki: Sound of the Earth: Chapter 3

The installation Sound of the Earth: Chapter 3 is conceived by the sound artist Yuri Suzuki and specially developed for the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries, that will take place from July 15 to December 11, 2022. The installation is one of the special commissions of the manifestation and will open the thematic exhibition curated by Ersilia Vaudo, an astrophysicist and Chief Diversity Officer at the European Space Agency (ESA). 

Sound of the Earth: Chapter 3 brings together the idea of a local and global community that is connected through sound. The artwork is designed to challenge how we experience foreign cultures by using machine learning to connect distinct localities to create a collective soundscape where no land masses or borders are visible. The artwork is a reminder that everyone can find common ground and connection when we listen to each other and combines an interactive website developed as part of the Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants at Google Arts & Culture with an accompanying physical installation within Triennale Milano.

The website soundoftheearth.org digitally represents the world as a geodesic sphere and invites users to submit and listen to sounds from all over the world from the comfort of their own home. You are invited to submit sounds online and join the global sound archive which is being created as part of this project. The project uses machine learning to link user-submitted sounds to their nearest sonic neighbors, generating a unique journey through a changing soundscape that transcends geographic borders.

The physical installation will consist of a black 4 meter diameter geodesic sphere situated at the entrance to the thematic exhibition Unknown Unknowns. Positioned around the sphere visitors will hear a range of sounds, all of which have been submitted via the soundoftheearth.org website.

The Sound of the Earth series started in 2005 as a way for Yuri Suzuki to share his experiences of travel via collected sounds without using a traditional map. He created The Sound of the Earth initially as a spherical record project, the grooves representing the outlines of the geographical land mass. Each country on the disc was engraved with a different sound, as the needle moved across the record the field recordings were played. All the recordings were collected by Yuri Suzuki over the course of four years. The record was 30 minutes long and was an aural journey around the world featuring traditional folk music, national anthems, pop music and also spoken word broadcasts.

The series continued in 2019 with Sound of the Earth: Chapter 2—an interactive large-scale artwork created for Dallas Museum of Art with audience submitted sounds, following this Sound of the Earth: The Pandemic Chapter (2020) was then made. The Pandemic Chapter was a user-friendly website where users were able to record an audio clip & map it to a virtual globe. In the first month alone over 500 audio clips were uploaded to the website—these included everything from different ambulance sirens to waterfalls to the weekly Clap for Carers.

Sound of the Earth: Chapter 3 will be the most ambitious chapter in the series to date. Evolving for the post-covid world Chapter 3 will combine both a physical and digital experience of the project. Sound of The Earth: Chapter 3 is an auditory portrait of the world represented both online and offline which reflects the new ways in which audiences are now experiencing artworks in a post-pandemic world. Through active participation in the creative process, the lines between audience and artist blur, both becoming creators of the piece.

Sound of the Earth: Chapter 3 is one of the special commissions of the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition. The project is supported by Arts Council England and developed in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture.

Submit sounds online and join the global sound archive on soundoftheearth.org.

Discover more on the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition on triennale.org.