Georhythmic Drift Music was a multi-year hybridized work which focused on the intersections between deep listening research with VLF [very low frequency] radio emissions, unmanned aerial vehicles, and impromptu listening stations. Running experiments with aerial technology as both a courier system and an “acoustic prosthetic” captured the auditory potential of the atmosphere, our natural percussive noise poetics, with the aid of extended hand-made antennas. 

 

Employing a combination of low wattage FM broadcast, hand-built devices, and cellular live-streaming platforms, Ruehlen trafficked re-tuned and "prepared" readings of VLF weather across the airwaves using D.I.Y. tool and amorphous installation. These long range compositions were performed simultaneously in varying locations, often at great distances. The artist transmitted from a geographically remote region, while an audience often gathered in urban parking lots, tuning in communally through multi-channel car radio soundscapes for brief encounters that are otherwise inaudible on an electromagnetic grid infrastructure. VLF is often referred to by radio-hobbyists and scientists as “natural radio” because it acts as a conduit, apprehending and translating weather phenomenon.

 

Featured within the sprawling project are images, sonic maps, artist book, performances, gatherings, and videos from various aspects of the work including a solo exhibit at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.

 

Georhythmic Drift Music was produced as a PhD dissertation project in Intermedia Art, Writing & Performance at the University of Colorado-Boulder and through a generous grant from Grand Challenge Society's IRISS Project Society of the Integrated Remote and In Situ Sensing Program.