TYMPANIC TETHER

“One of the first devices to give man an extended voice was the horn. The first horns were aggressive, hideous sounding instruments, used to frighten off demons and other animals…”

TYMPANIC TETHER is a site specific, live 8-channel spatialized sound performance that reverse engineers the Emergency Broadcast Siren, by placing a microphone into the ontogenetic ear of the Social Body, thus the word as well as the mouth. A public-hearing that initiates a sonic proposition to reimagine Santorini’s aural warning signal.

There is currently, as of 2015, no evacuation strategy or emergency warning siren on the island of Santorini. The rocky ear-shaped volcanic caldera, and the mound of energy beneath it – billions of gallons of fluid, hot hot molten rock – every now and then reaches its capacity to contain itself, belching into overspill and cleansing the island of human civilization. Previous manifestations of the volcano that we now know as Santorini form blankets over one another, each resting atop the last, cities and biomes folding into the earth and the geological record as sedimentary layers.

Curtis Tamm / Hermione Spriggs