-We think that what we see and hear outside in the world is all there is.

-In fact, there are millions of interactions among particles, among molecules.

The universe is dynamic.

-The most interior, tiny parts of our molecular systems are vibrating.

Those cells are in motion.

Those particles are in motion.

-Vibrations, when they become regular, repeatable, and organized, become waves.

Depending on the frequency, that's what we begin to understand as sound or as light.

-We humans have a very limited capacity to see the energies in the world or to perceive the energies in the world.

-What these artists do is really make us aware of just the dazzling nature of the world that we can't perceive.

[music] -What you will see behind me in this space are three pieces that explore different facets of vibrations and waves.

The first is Telepathy by David Haines and Joyce Hinterding.

-For many years, we've been listening to all kinds of electromagnetic energy.

Obviously, we've been interested in sound.

We started to wonder, what would happen if you removed all the sound?

What would you hear?

Would you become telepathic?

-Telepathy is a large sculptural object that you enter inside, and it's an anechoic chamber.

-Anechoic chamber is a room that, to the best of its ability, deadens sound and vibration.

-We're in the process of installing pyramidal absorbers, which are these blue elements here.

They line the interior of the inner chamber, the floor, the roof, and the walls.

When they're quilted into the inside, there are different characteristics in what they block in sound and other types of waves, including radio waves.

-Because the material screens out radio frequency, it's a form of time traveling, really, isn't it?

We're displaced to another time prior to all of that stuff existing.

I think that that's really interesting.

-Energy Fields came out of the context of Pacific Standard Time's Art and Science Collide initiative.

Over many years, we noticed that a lot of artists that are interested in the scientific process incorporate sound as part of their creative practice.

After some discussion and looking at the broader context of sound culture and the ways in which it can be applied or understood through a scientific lens, we realized that we wanted to expand the scope of the exhibition to talk not just about sound but the fundamental building blocks of sound, which are vibrations, which is the pure, raw energy that are these building blocks of the universe.

-We chose the Pacific as the locus of operation, if you like, because it's the most active plate on the face of the Earth.

If you look at seismic activity, if you look at volcanic activity, if you look at nuclear testing, these are all sources of great vibration.

There's a linkage, this enormous ocean, that is like a connective tissue, and we started to think about it as just that, this way of imagining connection between the artists, between the practices, between the interests and the preoccupations that people maintain, and also between the research of the scientists that are involved, because there has been so much research that's happened in the Pacific.

I think the Ear(th) piece from Steve Roden is a great example of this idea of reconciling quite vast experience, something like seismic activity, and bringing it back to a very perceptible, approachable phenomena that, for one thing, we can hear.

-What it is is a room-sized chamber.

On top of the ceiling of the piece, you'll see dozens of tiny mechanical devices that are programmed to perform a musical score that is based on data from an earthquake in the Mojave.

Working with two scientists, Steve was able to construct this piece to take an incredibly violent natural phenomenon that we're all so familiar with here on the West Coast and turn it into something really delicate and beautiful -To be inside the Ear(th), it's a delightful experience because you are recognizing, in some respects, a different perspective on the scale of something like seismic information, those vibrations in the earth that are so enormous that they exceed our capacity to hear them, we certainly feel them sometimes, but he makes it available in a way that allows you to consider what that experience is at a different scale.

That there is a wonder that also maybe travels with that potential trauma.

-It's interesting being in here now.

They're like stalactites and stalagmites, but as if they've come from another planet.

Interesting because I haven't had that thought before, but they're sort of somehow growing out of the walls.

-We're hoping that the show will allow people to visualize and experience what we're talking about when we are talking about vibrations and waves, which is why the exhibition doesn't focus on two or three different kinds of vibrations or waves.

One of the pieces that really demonstrates the multiplicity of waves that we are trying to explore with this show is by the Colombian artist Alba Triana called Music on a Bound String No.

2.

[music] -I'm interested in exploring what is the minuscule level, the level of particles, vibrations, and interactions that govern absolutely everything.

-Music on a Bound String No.

2 comprises of a single string that's stretched around six feet across, and one end is a speaker that she has a sine wave going into the speaker at a low frequency to where it's inaudible, but it is moving.

-Sound travels through the string and becomes visible.

When we see the sound, since the sound is visible, I'm also using a light beam.

When the light beam encounters the visible wave, the sound wave, the sound wave decomposes the beam into the different light frequencies, and we get to see that as different colors.

This is like when the sun shines and it rains.

When the sun rays meet, the rain drops, the drops decompose the beam into its individual frequencies, and we get to see the rainbow.

-I think Alba's work is a good example of how we visualize invisible forces in a very tangible and hands-on way.

When you look at it is an illustration of a scientific phenomenon, while at the same time surpassing that and being actually the real thing.

-There are scientists, there are engineers, there are philosophers, and then there are artists like us.

I think that art is my tool to explore the natural world.

-As a species, I think we can all agree we know the world through our eyes, but I think there's an interesting reveal that happens when we start to think about the other senses that occupy us.

Something like listening, when we tap into it becomes a more activated process, a listening which is sort of like a piercing into the world.

-Our world has become so noisy, and particularly on the electromagnetic spectrum, transmitting in all directions, and acoustically incredibly noisy.

Removing all the sound was a question, I guess.

Could we do it?

-Right now, as I speak, I can hear my voice reverberating in the space, so there's this echo and reflection that takes place.

When you step inside telepathy, you're actually having that chance for reflection, that chance for sense-making, greatly reduced.

Suddenly the world shrinks from out here to this very intense sense of self that is really at first quite confronting, because you suddenly feel this almost like a vacuum, an evaporation of sense, but then you start to become more internal.

-A lot of people think the anechoic effect is one of absorption, and it is partly to do with that, but it's a magic object because it converts the sound energy into heat, and therefore it's no longer sound anymore, it's another form of energy.

-From an artistic perspective, in this perspective, they're used to create an environment where we don't actually hear outside sound, we only hear what's inside us.

There's as little reflection as possible, which means we can become very aware of ourselves.

-You start listening, your hearing grows, and you really quieten down as you start to listen to the extent of your hearing.

Then, you're like listening to your neck.

My neck makes quite a lot of noise, and it's scary because you realize how much sound there is in your body.

I had a great story from a friend of mine who's had a little kid in here and he was in here and he was like, "Oh yes," like, "Oh yes, whatever."

Then when they opened the door and walked outside, he went bonkers.

He started yelling and screaming because he could hear his voice.

-The idea is that it allows you to experience that vibration is always happening.

In this place, your body is both the primary source of those vibrations and the primary sensing device.

We are always part of this vibrational continuum, and we are always both creating energy and also interpreting and receiving and sensing energy.

-It's recognizing that even deep within us, even when we think it's silent, there is still an opportunity to discover something that you didn't know was there.

Even though we think we know ourselves so well, works like this offer that opportunity to be like, "Well, actually, there's something else there."

-I think that's the case for so many of the artists in this exhibit.

Give agency suddenly to the non-human world that's all around us that normally we sometimes have closed our ears to or we just don't have the anatomy to perceive.

I think that what artists do is that they can't suddenly make me hear ultrasonic.

They can't expand my human senses, but they can help me imagine.

They can translate into a different form.

[music]