Hum

[Listen with Headphones]

 
Once you hear the hum for the first time, the very idea of a silent room ceases to exist. Concrete walls, plaster columns, corners, light fixtures, cabinets – all transform into busy “emanators” of enchanting buzzes, crackles, rustles, high-pitched tones, rhythmic noise patterns, and a baseline omnipresent hum. A symphony of sound spilling out from the structure’s foundations.
 
My first encounter with this spectral electromagnetic presence was accidental, at Knockdown Center in Queens, New York. I was performing there with Thessia Machado, and we had placed a mixer near one of the stout metal columns built to support the giant roof of what had once been a door factory. Suddenly, in the midst of the performance, fragments of an evangelical sermon intermixed with bits of an early Britney Spears hit began infiltrating the sounds we were playing through our speakers. These sonic ghosts, in the form of radio waves, had leapt from the metal columns into the nearby mixer, making themselves audible to us and to the audience. That magic accident opened a door to what felt like a parallel sonic universe, accessible only with the right tools, and it sparked a new way of listening and composing for me.
 
Following my Knockdown Center visitation, I began composing a series of site-specific pieces with the electromagnetic life in and around the buildings where the pieces were performed. What Hums Beyond, which I performed at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in February 2025, was the eighth installment in this series.
 
When I collect electromagnetic field recordings, I start by positioning my body in relation to these invisible energies; I shape the recordings by moving—dancing, oscillating—through the structures with custom antennas I’ve designed for these pieces. Through induction, I become part of the energy flow, and my movements are imprinted in the recordings. The rhythm and gestures of my body merge with the energetic choreography of the space, forming the raw sonic material for the composition.
 
Bringing these signals into the realm of audibility is a form of enhanced attunement—my attempt to connect with a dimension of our world that is omnipresent, yet beyond our immediate perception. Anything that generates an electrical current emits electromagnetic radiation, creating a net of invisible fields that surround and penetrate us. Once brought into our realm of perception, these signals reveal much about our relationship with the planet: patterns of consumption and production, pathways of economic and social connection, and our deep entanglement with both modern technologies and abiding natural forces, like solar radiation or the lightning in a storm.
 
Whenever I collect structural electromagnetic recordings for a piece, one of my favorite aspects of these explorations is searching for a steady, constant rhythmic pattern that becomes for me the “heartbeat” of the building. At Humboldt, I found the heartbeat pulsing, crisp and quick, from the fire extinguisher fixtures embedded in the wall. The student lounge was especially rich: as I moved into the room with my antennae, Wi-Fi routers in one corner chirped rapidly as they flung data throughout the space. An old desktop computer played a full symphony of sounds as I moved slowly across its early-2000s monitor—each sweep of my antenna revealing a new voice. Powering the computer off and on again, I was mesmerized by the sequence of tones, the sound of multiple invisible, complex processes concluding and then resuming again.
 
After I’ve finished collecting my sonic archive of a building’s voice, I draw on that archive to compose a piece to be performed in the same space where the recordings were made. It’s important to me that the audience understands they are listening to a form of energy that is constantly present, yet normally beyond their perception. To help facilitate this connection, I incorporate a live component in which performers sonify the space’s electromagnetic activity in real time, using the same custom-made antennas with which I collect the pre-recorded archive. In performance, the archival sounds of the space and the live electromagnetic activity are layered and redistributed throughout the room via a multichannel sound system, allowing me to shape how the sounds move and interact within the space. The electromagnetic spectrum as we encounter it is increasingly regulated. – the airwaves that provide our most extensive means of communicating with each other have been fenced off and made domains of state and corporate control. By harnessing and redistributing these signals in space, disrupting imposed borders and arbitrary property lines, I propose alternative mappings of the energetic field which connects us all, a cartography rooted in presence, sensing, and bodily shared experience.