Ether is a hypothetical medium - supposed by the ancients to fill the heavens, proposed by scientist to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through space. The notion of 'ocean' was once as vague. Aristotle perceived of the world as a small place, bounded by a narrow river. Columbus believed the Atlantic was a much shorter distance across than we now know it to be. Even as early electromagnetic telegraphic and wireless transmissions propagating over, under, and through oceans collapsed distances between ships and shores, they revealed vast new oceans - oceans of static, oceans of noise.
etheric ocean is an underwater web art audio writing noise site. It is an imprecise survey of sounds both animal and mechanical, and of signs both real and imaginary, of distortions born of the difficulty of communicating through the medium of deep dense dark ocean. Like stations dotting a radio dial, murky diagrams, shifting definitions, appropriated texts, nautical associations, and wonky word plays are strung along a very long, horizontally scrolling browser window. This is a world of inversions. Sounds are deep harbours, or are they depths? Sounds purposefully unfold. Out of its element, uncannily airborne, a flying jellyfish drone wobbles about. Noises are made. Islands are Heard.
etheric ocean is commissioned by
Electronic Voice Pheneomena, an experimental literature and new media project exploring contemporary approaches to sound, voice, technology and writing, brought to you by
Mercy and Penned in the Margins, Liverpool and London UK.
[ SOURCES ]
Max Ehrenfreund (2013)
Meet the flying machine that was inspired by a jellyfish, The Washington Post. (25 November 2013) (Video and flying machine by Leif Ristroph)
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MH370: the forlorn bleeps remind us of the vast depth of the ocean, The Guardian. (8 April 2014)
Marconi Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford UK.
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Whale Acoustics
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Thomson & Murray (1885)
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