Petri Kuljuntausta is a sound artist, composer, and musician. He has performed music for an underwater audience, improvised with the birds, and made music out of whale calls and the sounds of the Northern Lights. As an artist he often works with environmental sounds and live-electronics, and create sound installations for galleries and museums.
Kuljuntausta has composed over 100 works for various record labels in Australia, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Sweden, UK and the USA. He has published three books on Sound Art and Electronic Music. In 2005 he won an award, the Finnish State Prize for Art, from the Finnish government as a distinguished national artist.
Earth Sound
Earth Sound transfers the vibrations of the soil audible to the human ears. A microphone is buried under the ground, close to the roots of a tree. The big tube and its speaker distributes the underground sounds in real-time to the environment (to the air).
When changes happen in the environment (footsteps, passing car, wind), it creates pressure changes in the air, in the soil, and in the trees. When the wind starts to blow, the leaves begin to move and hit each other, and the light noise at the top of the tree increases.
Eventually the tree trunks begin to move, and the branches of the tree scrub the branches of the adjacent tree. As the wind grows, the movement continues from the top until the tree root. The movement in the trunk creates movement in the roots and in the soil, and the movement produces sounds. The more the trees and their roots move, the more rumbling sounds can be heard inside the earth.
