Tectonic: Earthquake Music by Micah Frank

Written By: evan on June 11, 2010 10 Comments

Last month, we discovered Milton Garces’ Volcano Music, and now Micah Frank brings us another geological music project: Tectonic. This one utilizes real-time processing of xml feeds of earthquake data to generate a sonic quake landscape.

Tectonic is a sound sculpture created in real time by earthquakes as they occur across the globe. A tightly integrated system between Max/MSP, Google Earth and Ableton Live processes a stream of real-time data that is translated into synthesis and sample playback parameters.

When an earthquake occurs, seismic data is relayed to the system, sound is produced and Google Earth immediately flies to the coordinates of the latest earthquake giving us a visual representation of the newest developments. As multiple earthquakes occur daily, the sculpture builds, enmeshing itself in a complex soundscape of textures and tones – every second, different from the last and never repeating the same stage twice. [1]