Ionization Music

Ionization Music, 2023. Trinitite, Geiger counter, guitar amplifier and electronics.

Sound Sample

Please note: this is a recording of the direct output of the most recent iteration of the musical software, and so it is not representative of the effect of the guitar amplifier, nor of how the sculpture sounds in a physical space.

Artist’s Statement

In Ionization Music, a Cold War-era Civil Defense Geiger counter detects the radiation emitted by a sample of Trinitite: desert sand from the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico, melted into glass by the world’s first nuclear explosion in 1945. The iconic “click” of the Geiger counter is processed electronically into a dense soundscape that is varied, spatial and musical but inherently unpredictable and arhythmic, reflecting the temporary rise and fall of radioactivity in harmony and discord.

The piece reflects upon the history of the Southwestern landscape as evidenced in the detritus of the anthropocene. It is a reminder of the relationship between history, technology, and the military–industrial complex. It is a reflection upon the perceived emptiness of the American West as a justification for a variety of cultural experiments by myriad systems of extraction.

Artist Bio

I am an artist and photographer interested in human relationships to the world as mediated by technology and technical media. Believing that technology must be understood not only as a tool, but as a material, I investigate the process of mediation through photography, video, sound, music and software. Engaging critically with contemporary apparatuses, both technical and systemic, I aim to demonstrate their malleability as mediums of aesthetic expression. As a trained photographer working in many mediums, I manipulate images and technology in order to subvert the desired and expected outcomes of representational media. Raised in Texas and residing in Santa Fe, my current work is intrinsically tied to and born of the landscape of the Southwest and concerned with the environmental issues of the region and contemporary uses of its land and resources.

List of Components

  • Trinitite: a small piece of the sand-glass created by the Trinity test in 1945

  • Geiger counter: a cold-war era Civil Defense device

  • Guitar amplifier: a small, tweed-covered guitar amplifier in the style of the early Fender amps of the 1950s and ‘60s

  • Vitrine: this covers the trinitite and the Geiger counter, “protecting” the audience from the actually harmless radiation

  • Pedestal: the vitrine and its contents, as well as the guitar amp, are elevated on a simple white gallery pedestal to place the sculpture at just below eye level

  • Electronics: a Raspberry Pi, hidden inside the pedestal, receives the signal from the Geiger counter and performs all sound processing and then outputs the soundscape to the guitar amplifier

Sound Processing

The initial inspiration for the sound/music came from the discovery that the Geiger counter outputs a high-impedance signal more akin to an electric guitar pickup than to a standard headphone or line audio signal. Initial experiments therefore began by processing the audio through various guitar pedals. The mature version of the project eschews these pedals in favor of the more expansive possibilities of a completely custom audio program, written and executed in Pure Data. The sound design of the primary musical voice still evokes an electric guitar, without trying to mimic one.

The processing in the software is fairly dense, but the overarching theme is that it detects clicks (which represent ionization events, the effect of Beta and Gamma radiation), and generates notes in response to those clicks, as well as processing the sound of the clicks themselves, combining both into a generative soundscape. While the overall radioactivity of the Trinitite sample changes only over a span of years, the inherent randomness of the ionization events causes fluctuations in the number of ionization events in the span of seconds or minutes of observation. In general, the more ionization events, the more disharmony and discordance is present in the soundscape.

Thus there are periods of alternating intensity and quietude, introducing temporally localized variations within the overall tonality of the piece. All of this processing is live and dynamic, and the audience can therefore correlate the movement of the physical needle on the Geiger counter and its direct measurement of radiation with the musical, aesthetic experience of the soundscape. As an example, one of the primary ways that this correlation occurs is by tonal movement along the harmonic series, a mathematical sequence fundamental to our experience of tonality, the further along which you go, the more discordant a harmony sounds

Technical Requirements

The sculpture is largely self-contained, though it requires standard 110v power for the guitar amplifier and the Raspberry Pi which runs the software. The Geiger counter is battery powered, and runs on D batteries that have a far longer lifespan than the exhibition requires.

Travel Requirements

None: I am the sole artist, and live in Santa Fe.

Ongoing Development

An early, work-in-progress version of this piece was shown in the exhibition SW Water and Light (curated by myself) at TCC Chicago. I consider the version of this work presented in this application to be complete, and self-sufficient. That being said, if the project were accepted for exhibition in Currents, I would continue to develop the musical program for the work, increasing the dynamism and complexity of its response to the Geiger counter. In short, the work will continue to be refined and developed, but will not change fundamentally.

My investigation into this subject continues, however. In 2023 I traveled to one of the biannual “open houses” at the Trinity site. I took a large number of photographs and gathered mineral samples as well as making field recordings of the output of the same Geiger counter used in this sculpture. While this material is currently undeveloped, the long time span between this application and the exhibition does open up the potential for this material to inform or supplement the installation described in the application in the form of photographic prints, a publication or some other output. None of that is certain, and is certainly not required, but I mention it here in hopes of furthering conversations with the curatorial team. Thank you for your consideration.