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"The comparison of a city's clock to a person's heart, though it has been made countless times, remains evocative. When Christina Kubisch first visited MASS MoCA in 1996, she was moved by the fact that the century-old factory clock had not kept time, nor had its bells rung, since 1986, when the Sprague Electric Company vacated the 13-acre site. This 19th-century clock, located in an eighty-foot tower with a 750-pound and a 1,000-pound bell, had set the rhythm of the workday in North Adams since 1895, ringing every quarter hour. Now those bells and beautiful brass clockworks share the tower with components of The Clocktower Project: solar panels, electronic sound system, and a computer with Kubisch's unique program on its flash disc. "

"The table is made of steel rods and filled it with beach rocks, then it was lowered into the ocean near Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, where over the course of two months it accumulated living accretions from the ocean. Atop the table is an oversize sound-amplifying funnel reminiscent of the hailing horns used on whaling ships, which is constructed of laser-cut panels of polycarbonate lashed together with nylon zip ties. The horn amplifies and concentrates a sound recording made by a hydrophone close to where the table was submerged."

" Blurring the boundaries of perception, Nadine Robinson's installation alles grau presents an original soundtrack for modern civilization and an apocalyptic landscape of time. Translated from German, the title, alles grau in grau malen, means "to paint everything grey or pessimistically." The larger-than-life grey panels, speakers, smoke, light and throbbing acoustics are suggestive of Biblical depictions of the end of time. Robinson refers to these doomsday narratives as part of "the specter of Revelation," which "looms in the popular imagination today.""

"As someone whose entry point into the vast world of musical repertoire has mostly been through collecting records and since the most unusual and unique things are usually the hardest ones to hear live, Maryanne Amacher has always been something of an enigma to me. A composer of vast, space-specific sonic panoramas at crushingly loud volumes, Amacher defies containment and commodification. When Tzadik finally released a CD of her music, I finally thought I was able to experience it. But actually, I hadn't. Two speakers can't really convey what she is doing in space and as an apartment dweller the kinds of volumes she demands would inevitably lead to an eviction. Yet through listening and reading her essays on various subjects, especially her fascinating contribution to a panel on Cage's influence where she spoke about creating a music that is somehow liberated from time, I felt compelled to talk to her. We spent only about an hour in conversation-the unfortunate time constraints of a reality based on schedules-but it felt like it could have gone on forever. And, in some ways, it will…"

How can sound help us better understand our environment and engage in today's critical ecological issues? The Ear to the Earth festival kicks up the volume of the earth's sonic life with concerts, installations, public art, and panel discussions that explore our interaction with natural and man-made worlds through sound. We speak with sound artists Laurie Spiegel and David Dunn.

How can sound help us better understand our environment and engage in today's critical ecological issues? The Ear to the Earth festival kicks up the volume of the earth's sonic life with concerts, installations, public art, and panel discussions that expl

"Composer Charles Amirkhanian, soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, and film editor and sound designer Walter Murch consider the environmental implications and artistic possibilities of aural landscapes and ambient sounds."