Designer Yuri Suzuki & DMA Launch New Interactive Work Documenting Sounds Of The Pandemic

The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), in collaboration with London-based experience and sound designer Yuri Suzuki, launched today Sound of the Earth: The Pandemic Chapter -a crowdsourced archive of sounds captured around the world during this global pandemic.

Drawing from an ongoing open call for submissions, the collected sounds from audio and video of life in this new era are mapped onto a virtual rendering of the globe based on the location in which they were captured, culminating in a dynamic and evolving audio experience of the lives of people around the world. Sound of the Earth: The Pandemic Chapter is a digital version of Sound of the Earth: Chapter 2, the work that Suzuki created for speechless: different by design. This major multisensory exhibition co-organized by the DMA and the High Museum of Art closed early due to COVID-19.

"In this moment of tremendous change and uncertainty, we wanted to create an open platform for people to express themselves and to capture our shared experience of the fleeting moments around us during this period. Through our collective observations and the simple act of listening, we hope to provide participants with a moment of global shared empathy and a means of connection," said Sarah Schleuning, Interim Chief Curator and The Margot B. Perot Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design.

Sound of the Earth: The Pandemic Chapter translates elements of Suzuki's original installation-in which the exhibition visitor encountered a range of globally crowdsourced sounds by placing their ear against the surface of a spherical sculpture-into the virtual realm and lends the project new relevance as a living record of our unprecedented historical moment that evolves in real time. This new work extends the life and vision of speechless by promoting interactivity, fostering empathy, and-in this time of isolation-bridging the distance between us through the medium of sound.

To be part of this evolving artwork, audiences can continue to submit sounds of their experiences during the pandemic-from cooking dinner at home, to the ambulance siren passing by, to online connections with loved ones. Sound submissions can be uploaded as audio or video files to earthsounds.dma.org, and will be added to the project on an ongoing basis.

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