Medial Art

Now that I think about it some more this really is a good concept. David Reid was trying to push me there in late June in London, but my jet-lagged head wouldn't respond.

So I just ordered Air Pressure Fluctuations, by Felix Hess. It's a recording of standing waves over the Atlantic. You put contact mikes on your apartment windows. Then you record for five days. Then you speed up the recording 360 times normal. Traffic sounds rise to the tinkling of tiny insects. And you start to hear a periodic hum—the sound of pressure waves over the ocean.

It's like Heidegger says: you never hear the wind in itself, only the wind in the doorway. Music, in its mediality, is just the translation of one object by another.