In 2019, Nicolas Sowers was invited to participate in the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. Our installation challenged participants to think about sound as a force to be harnessed and as a material to be designed. Using sounds recorded from Black Rock City, the temporary city built in the Nevada desert each year at Burning Man, the installation created a tension between repellant sounds i.e. generators with more subtle sounds such as the temple on fire-- a kind of hushed noise which creates a space for people to share.

Five stereo channels of field recordings including bicycles, generators, fire organs, and the persistent drone of the party metropolis are diffused through five acrylic panels organized on a radial grid, echoing the layout of Black Rock City.

When we completed construction of the installation frame, we discovered that the bass vibrations produced by the audio transducers found their way into this circular plate. Lying down on the plate produced a similar effect to being at Black Rock City, absorbing the pulsing drone that is inescapable at the festival. This background hum can be found in any city, distilled through field recordings and filtered by a structure such as this one.