Floating Beam Christoph De Boeck 2017

A salt vapour washes over a supporting beam made of brushed steel that hovers in mid-air. It emits a constant percussive sound composed of hundreds of so-called acoustic emissions. A sensor is capturing these emissions caused by the corrosion process in this 20th century construction icon. The inaudible, ultra-acoustic waveforms are registered with an oscilloscope and consequently they are played back with a lower audio sample rate.

Listening to the internal activity of solid structures reveals the transformatory nature of infrastructure, a metastability, a world in distress. Every new acoustic emission is concatenated to the audioloop: an initial loop of one or two crack sounds is extended with each new event so that multiple micro-melodies arise. It becomes the song of a monolith animated with the sound of its own demise.