Eter­nal sounds — The in­vi­si­ble sounds of the Ruhr re­gi­on

Sin­ce Sep­tem­ber 2024, sounds that are nor­mal­ly hid­den from view have be­en au­di­ble at the Ger­man Mi­ning Mu­se­um in Bo­chum: Wi­th the art­work Ewig­keits­ge­räu­sche, ar­tist Mo­ritz Fehr has crea­ted a spa­ti­al sound in­stal­la­ti­on that acou­sti­cal­ly stages the “eter­nal tasks” of post-mi­ning. The con­stant his­sing of wa­ter pumps, the hum­ming of fans and the elec­tro­ma­gne­tic whir­ring of ge­ne­ra­tors are part of a com­plex com­po­si­ti­on pro­cess that is con­trol­led in re­al time by a ran­dom ge­ne­ra­tor and fills the ent­rance hall of the mu­se­um via 21 loud­spea­k­ers. In ad­di­ti­on to the ma­chi­ne sounds, seis­mic da­ta is al­so in­cor­po­ra­ted, which re­cords earth tre­mors cau­sed by mi­ning and con­verts them in­to au­di­ble vi­bra­ti­ons. In this way, the me­cha­ni­cal and geo­lo­gi­cal con­se­quen­ces of cen­tu­ries of mi­ning ac­ti­vi­ty are not on­ly ma­de vi­si­ble, but can al­so be ex­pe­ri­en­ced.

The au­dio­vi­sual­ly enhan­ced art­work spans a fa­sci­na­ting arc bet­ween tech­no­lo­gy, land­scape and hu­man in­ter­ven­ti­on. Vi­si­tors can in­ter­act wi­th a vir­tu­al sculp­tu­re on the mu­se­um grounds via a spe­ci­al­ly de­ve­lo­ped aug­men­ted rea­li­ty app and gain in­sights in­to the so­nic and phy­si­cal mo­ni­to­ring of the post-mi­ning land­scape. Wi­th his com­po­si­ti­on, which is de­ter­mi­ned by ran­dom pro­ces­ses among other things, Fehr ad­dres­ses the far-rea­ching, of­ten eter­nal con­se­quen­ces of mi­ning for the re­gi­on — and thus opens up a new per­spec­ti­ve on the re­la­ti­onship bet­ween man, ma­chi­ne and na­tu­re.