Even though we can’t hear it, infrasound fills the air. Its wavelengths, which can be a mile long, travel over hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. If humans could perceive frequencies lower than 20 Hz, then changing ocean currents, wildfires, turbines, receding glaciers, superstorms, the massive cooling systems of data centers, and other geophysical and anthropogenic sources from across the planet would be part of the quotidian soundscape of our lives, wherever we might be.
Macrophones appropriates Cold War technology and combines it with cutting-edge signal processing and machine learning in order to make infrasound audible. Situated in locations including old-growth forests, the Arctic tundra, and city centers, the installation comprises electronics that record microbarometric fluctuations through a sculptural wind filter. The recordings are processed and resampled upward into an acoustic range that we can hear, and listeners at the site hear infrasound spatially situated in the landscape around them.
Paying attention to how we are connected through the atmosphere, rather than through the internet, is both poetic and political. This work germinated in Oregon amid an unprecedented season of wildfires. It developed along with my chronic illness, Lyme, a tick-borne disease that has become more common as a result of warming winters. My young son watched over the development process; our ancestors mined coal. For me, it’s not just a matter of hearing what is novel to the human ear, but of encountering those agencies greater than our own that connect us through the atmosphere.
Interview: "Brian House on Infrasound" in 15 Questions, 2025 ⧉
Publication: “Infrasound and the Planetary Imaginary” in Seismograf Peer, 2025 ⧉
Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World (Gruenrekorder, 2025) features a 24-hour macrophone recording made in the small town of Amherst, Massachusetts, sped up by a factor of 60 to 24 minutes.
…as ominous as these sounds can be, they arrive with an immense sense of beauty and wonder…an unparalleled love letter to planet earth in the liminal space where science and art collide.
Inspired by Roger Payne’s Songs of the Humpback Whale recordings which transformed how we view animals and conservation, House is going for something similarly appropriate to climate change with his new album.
House’s recordings reveal that we are changing the planet in ways we can’t always perceive.
The album is scientific in method, yet spiritual in impact. It’s also one where data becomes elegy and atmosphere becomes an instrument.
Earth’s rumbling, secret soundtrack.
Included in The Best Field Recordings of 2025