Waves elicit many responses

If you have had the good fortune to stroll past the show, you may have encountered an unusual milieu surrounding Building 54. Clumps of onlookers, necks strained toward the sky, gaze up toward the 35-channel speaker system mounted on the south side of Cambridge’s tallest registered building.

This wonder of science, broadcast daily, has left some MIT students and faculty puzzled during their lunchtime commute. Those who have come to witness the noise share the experience like a close secret between friends. Casual passersby either ignore the deep resonance altogether, no doubt contemplating their hectic lives, or appeared baffled by the scene.

As a visual artist, Bodle has created a musical exhibit that focuses on the artistic presentation in addition to the sounds themselves. So far, viewers have demonstrated a “great response,” but have also had “a few complaints from occupants inside the building,” Bodle said.

However you choose to categorize the experience, Carrie Bodle’s vision for the project is finally being realized after long stages of planning and revision. “We had to take many precautions” to protect the building, she said, “especially with the clamping system and nylon sheets to pad the speakers against the walls.”

Begun in October, “Sonification / Listening Up” was intended to run in May but experienced setbacks with regard to safety. After issues with the clamping system were resolved, workers along with a skeleton team of friends and MIT students assembled and mounted the revised apparatus last week.

Listening to the sound of the upper atmosphere may not improve problem set grades, but students and others nonetheless pause to listen to the sound of science being united with art. With an ever-increasing detachment from nature and the outside world, it may sometimes take the exotic thrum of ionospheric waves to make us stop and notice our surroundings.

“Sound Off” will be presented this Friday, Sept. 16 from 5–7 p.m. at the Green Building. Admission is free and food will be provided.