Harmony in Precarity

Contributors | Po-Hao Chi

How does microgravity/hypergravity shape our perceptual experience of listening with weightlessness? How can we seek to exploit this spatial aspect of sound as a distinct parameter in its own right?

Harmony in Precarity utilizes an augmented acoustic device to explore unfamiliar moments in microgravity. The rootless state in parabolas is a metaphor and generative method for "precarity." Precarity's original meaning, "depending on the will or pleasure of another," is derived from the Latin word for prayer. Perhaps it is, as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing writes, "the condition of our time." It is also the defining feature of an entire class of people, the precariat. This work regards the precarious spatiality and microgravity as an emerging form of sonic thought and imagination on space exploration.

The acoustic device can function as a wearable medium that reacts to the operator's body dynamic or as an autonomous device with weightlessness. It simulates a "rainstick," an ancient musical instrument used by natives of South America to summon wind and rain and avoid drought. With multiple stick-piezos connected to extended springs inside plastic tubes as a contact microphone, the system captures piezoelectric signals when particles hit and transmit vibrations and collisions of fragmented debris inside the device to a customized sonification program during weightless periods.

This piece was performed onboard a Zero-G parabolic flight in May 2021.