238, 855 Miles was created by using a kind of audiovisual instrument that I built called the "Hydrocymatic Photoconvoluter". The name is, intentionally, a bit pretentious and silly, but basically it consists of an oscillating speaker component attached to a thin synthetic membrane. A thin layer of water is suspended on this membrane, and the oscillation of the speaker component drives the vibration of the membrane and the water suspended on it.

 

Different frequencies cause different visuals to form in the liquid, some more interesting than others.

After playing around with this "instrument" a bit, I was able to figure out which tones produced the most interesting visuals. Unfortunately most of the frequencies of these tones were very low, sometimes below the range of human hearing or at the very least below the threshold of pitch fusion (about 40 - 60 Hz). So the tones that you are hearing in this piece are actually the original frequencies shifted up 2 or 3 octaves.

 

When this piece was originally exhibited, the light source was a high intensity fill light like you might see on a movie set or a construction site at night. It resulted in some very crisp, beautiful imagery, but for this particular piece I effectively had to trade aesthetics for concept.

 

The light you see in this video is entirely moonlight reflected off of the surface of the suspended water; there aren't any other sources of illumination, except for of course the light pollution that's part of every modern city.

 

238, 855 miles is the approximate distance between the earth and the moon (the exact distance is variable). Because light travels at a little over 186,000 miles per second, it takes the light from the moon about 1.3 seconds to reach our eyes.

 

The time between each note in this musical composition is also about 1.3s. To be more exact, the Max patch I used to generate the tones played a MIDI note every 1.28222 seconds...

 

So the light that you see from the moon at the onset of each note actually began its journey at precisely the moment that the previous note had sounded.

 

So, each time you hear one of the musical intervals in 238, 855 Miles, you are also, in effect, experiencing an interval of space as well.

 

To me, the concept of spacetime - the idea that space and time are in fact one phenomenon - is a very difficult concept to grasp. This piece wrestles with the idea of creating an experience that makes such an unfathomable truth tangible and accessible.

 

Just as the cymatic patterns of light are integrally related to the sound waves which produced them, the propagation and perception of both phenomena -  light and sound - are entirely dependent on the interplay of space and time which makes our existence and experience possible.