THE PLACE WHERE YOU GO TO LISTEN

Composer John Luther Adams has created a new light and sound installation at the University of Alaska's Museum of the North.

From the New Yorker article (which also features embedded musical compositions by Adams) - “The Place Where You Go to Listen”—a kind of infinite musical work that is controlled by natural events occurring in real time. The title refers to Naalagiagvik, a place on the coast of the Arctic Ocean where, according to legend, a spiritually attuned Inupiaq woman went to hear the voices of birds, whales, and unseen things around her. In keeping with that magical idea, the mechanism of “The Place” translates raw data into music: information from seismological, meteorological, and geomagnetic stations in various parts of Alaska is fed into a computer and transformed into an intricate, vibrantly colored field of electronic sound."

Read this piece by John Luther Adams from his website.

Listen to Public Radio International's Living on Earth segment about the piece.