'Listening to the nonhuman: sounds of air' by Josefina Nelimarkka

Listen. Listen.

The difference between hearing and listening is in the level of awareness. Whereas hearing is an act of perceiving, listening involves a deeper commitment and a bodily engagement beyond the mere sensorial. Listening is active, it is about tuning in for the environment that becomes a thoughtful gesture of care. This is crucial especially in terms of sensing the sounds of the environment.

In nature, there is no such a thing as silence. Sounds we listen are sounds we share with others. Actions we share are actions we live together. Listening with attention can help to become sensitive in order to recognise the more-than-human encounters. With this writing, I would like to pause the moment and think about the sonic dimension of the atmosphere and poetically reimagine different ways of being in the air.

The forest fills the air with more than a momentary scent

Atmospheric Un/knowing invites to immerse into this actuality (w)here time flows through and elevates in the air. The sensory and poetic walk in the forest explores the symbiosis between the boreal forests and clouds. Biogenic chemicals emitted by the coniferous trees, ‘the scent of the forest’, produce tiny aerosol particles that mix upwards with the air masses from the Arctic Ocean and influence the clouds above, the hydrological cycle and future-yet-to-be.

Guided by transparent poetics, the work is not only an exercise of listening to what is surrounding but an act of un/knowing what surrounds. Un/knowing is a method to let your body sense carefully in order to find your own cloud beyond any preconception-clouds. The language is literally removed to reveal anew. In the presence of poetry and absence of control, a cloud is rewritten between the forest, the atmosphere and the experience asking to encounter the environment as a symbiotic future rather than a survival of the strongest.

When we breathe we become air

Air is the space of all being that has been inside of all being – connecting all being together. With every breath, we touch the planet.

When the breath becomes air it collects all the untold histories that compose nature and future.

Air flow holds clouds and entropy keeps everything in motion. Gravity becomes ineffective when particles collide in the flux. Wind currents and weather patterns continue and return. Yet nothing repeats because every repetition makes a difference. Energy is always in circulation, it transforms both itself and other forces present in the 'now'.

Air is not silent. Atmospheric sound is a rhythm moving back and forth in the air. Temperature and wind influence how far it spreads. Sound extends in the air as a vibration of atoms and molecules. Due to almost inexistent atmospheric absorption, the infrasonic activity from weather systems and geophysical fluids can travel very far, even go around the Earth or bounce back from the higher levels of the stratosphere. Many species use infrasound for remote sensing and long-distance communication. Yet for the human ear, the waves of the atmospheric sound with a low frequency less than 1 Hz remain inaudible.

Sounds from turbulence, remote storms, avalanches, volcanoes and earthquakes to extraterrestrial events such as meteoroids and near-Earth objects have been observed to prove there is more diversity in the free-flying atmospheric acoustics. For example, the fascinating microbaroms are ambient infrasound produced by the breaking ocean waves which leave the deep waters of the sea to ascend even further in the moisture of the atmosphere. Thus the ‘voices of the sea’ can be un/heard thousands of kilometers away in the sky. Distant infrasonic waves are detected as far as in the clouds of Venus. To move from the natural word, in the timely context of advanced infrasound technology, identifying non-natural sources such as nuclear explosions must be mentioned.

In the atmosphere, a so-called zone of silence is a misthought. Listening to the air even though we cannot hear it expands the observation and experience. Atmospheric noise becomes a signal.

How far away is your cloud?

As the infrasound wave reaches clouds, the sound propagates in the water vapour. The particles move nearby particles transmitting the kinetic energy further inside the illusory softness. The hydro-acoustic qualities of clouds depend on their current physical properties and sounds absorb in their nebulous being.

What defines a cloud is the moment of ‘now’. Forever in transformation, a cloud is a multiplicity – a past/present/future – a formless form, a possible scenario and a technopolitical challenge. Actual, virtual and poetic at all times. Shifting not only in shape and volume but also in scale between micro and macro. Constantly dis/appearing in various forms, states and meanings, clouds are notoriously difficult to measure and simulate in climate models. The unknown of clouds holds the mystery for both science and the future of our ecosystem as the water droplets and ice crystals continue to condense and evaporate. Drizzle and rain are those that fall.

Clouds are the visible phenomena of the invisible interactions in the atmosphere and important part of life on Earth. Clouds play with a vital role in the climate system by regulating the amount of solar radiation and precipitation. Yet without these atmospheric aerosols, formulating from not-really-a-nothingness of air and becoming detectable in the size of 1 nanometre, there would be no clouds. Acting as nuclei for cloud droplets, in the supersaturated air, aerosols initiate cloud formation and influence what kind of cloud they turn out to be and how long it lasts.

A cloud is the ongoing change that defines the moment

Colours and sounds proceed as a continuous formation arising from the complexity of aerosol and cloud interactions. Supersaturation looks into the contingency of a cloud. The work imagines the unknown realm of air with scientific aerosol data measured from the atmosphere – to be felt and become sensed. The experimental and totally unpredictable real-time data technology is a  ‘cloud-to-cloud’ communication between the enormous amount of scientific observations and extensive variations of digital video and sounds, captured and interpreted from the sky.

Every moment of a ‘cloud’ is unique because different streams of in/visible information mix, overlap and influence one another at all times. The atmospheric orchestra is conducted by the supersaturation of air, emerging with the real reality events, the futurities in the heights of the sky. The more there are aerosols in the atmosphere, the more reflective clouds become. The warmer the air, the more water vapour it carries. The more there are boreal forests, the cooler the effect of clouds.

Planetary thinking evolves in the air and atmosphere. As an artist, it seems critical to examine the notion of a cloud in art, climate and society. For me, a cloud is a fluid continuum made of hyperconnections and virtualities rather than stable being. The interactivity is not limited to a relationship between the viewer and the work but actually relocating between the viewer and the atmosphere. The real-life information from the clouds has a possibility to expand our sensitivity and bring forth the interdependence that sustains a more diverse life.

Artistic research in collaboration with Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR), Helsinki University

Sounds in collaboration with Tapio Viitasaari

The artist portrait by Aino Luukkonen

All other images by Josefina Nelimarkka

www.josefinanelimarkka.com

Josefina Nelimarkka is an interdisciplinary artist working across art, science and technology. Her research-based practice explores the phenomena of the in/visible and its perception through performative processes, real-time environmental data and site-sensitive installations. In her current work, she is interested in the politics of air and the phenomenology of clouds in relation to the future scenarios of climate change. Her multisensory projects are exhibited internationally and virtually. Recently, she was the artist-in-residence at SPACE Art + Technology in London and Finnish Institute in Athens.

Josefina Nelimarkka’s essay has been commissioned by the FCINY for the podcast episode Exercises in Togetherness X Withstanding: Listening to the nonhuman. Listen in on the discussion with Alaina Claire Feldman, Miho Hatori, Josefina Nelimarkka and host Elina Suoyrjö here.