"This gravitational draw that holds us to the ground was once known as Eros—as Desire!—the lovelorn yearning of our body for the larger Body of Earth, and of the earth for us." —David Abram
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The Ground, It Calls Me is a series of works making the seductive pull of gravity primally experienced as sound. The pieces sonify a data set of gravitational waves, which are disturbances in the curvature of spacetime generated during supernovas. The sonifications create the sensation of bending time and space, with moments of compression and expansion.
This data set was collected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), which made the first ever observation of gravitational waves in 2015. LIGO detects the presence of gravitational waves by looking for minuscule displacements in the interference patterns of laser beams traveling between mirrors set miles apart.
The pieces vary in their interpretation of the data through the modification of sample playback rate, time stretching algorithm, and pitch, producing unique sonic textures.
