Geological minerals (such as copper, quartz and mica) are embedded in audio circuits and conversely geological processes are teeming with electrical activity. Power grids and integrated circuits could be described as important waypoints in the domestication of electro-magnetism. Advanced methods of geo-sensing and globally coordinated sensor networks are currently plumbing earth attributes by way of its signals: By way of electrical transduction (vibrations converted into electrical fluctuations) or by directly tapping into ground conductivity (telluric current monitoring and geoelectrical methods). Our growing awareness of earthly variations in voltage manifest a complex intertwining of the geologic, the electric and the technical. What are the terrestrial contexts of audio circuits and conversely what electrical circuitry is at work in geology? What does earth's circuitry sound like and how can we listen-in on the contextual agency of such circuits? How can such geoelectric hearing redress the binaries of 'natural' and 'technical'? And more urgently: How can modes of geo-sentient attention rectify inequalities in human-non-human relations? This research developed tools for environmental voltage acquisition while looking into the contexts of geoelectrics. In doing so it recasts the electroacoustic as a central constituent of terrestrial agency rather than synthetic isolated abstractions.
The following collection of experiments, recordings, images, observations and anecdotes providing a partial roadmap for the Hearing Geoelectric research. The collection as such functions as a contextual atlas, or a compendium to a set of operations in the actual. They are waymarks towards hearing a native electric.
