Turbulence Studies: Latent amongst the Air (What happened + Background) 1/10
Photo by Sabine van Nistelrooij
The following text and images describe and reflect upon the research, experimentation, and presentation of Turbulence Studies: Latent amongst the Air, as a part of an ongoing series about building a practice and artistic method around the physical phenomenon of turbulence, working with the physicality of air, light, sound, and various technological devices(machines) that are used across different industries besides arts and music. Through weaving in the site-specific sounds, acoustic characteristics of the location, stories, and poems about turbulence to the building of a technical machine and a multi-sensorial system of a kind, the project follows the narrative of turbulence multi-dimensionally. As much as the phenomenon of turbulence is keenly observed, researched and studied in scientific scope and academic context, such as in physics, meteorology, engineering and etc, this practice-based study, takes an alternative approach of using it as a tool to reflect and ruminate on the indeterminate and interdependent relationship we form with our surroundings and the environment.
Based on ongoing practice of Turbulence Studies, myself, Zois Loumakis, Jesus Iglesias and Sonic Acts team started working together from late 2021 for its third iteration, making prototypes, visiting different sites in and around Amsterdam area, developing bespoke software and hardware system. As a result, in may 2022, Latent amongst the Air, took place at Moving Arts Center Amsterdam(MACA) in NDSM Wharf, an old shipyard that became one of the most bustling districts for arts and culture in Amsterdam. We spent 15 consecutive days in and around the area, researching, building and installing custom developed parts, pneumatic instrument structure, lights and speakers, a system to explore and to look into the contingent hence the unpredictable parameters that condition and govern the latent patterns, interactions, and behaviors of the air that is site-specific to the project space of MACA .
Immersing ourselves in the ever-changing and constantly fluctuating landscape of the audio-visual-pneumatic weathering phenomenon of turbulence.
This production residency culminated in public presentation of the system as a multi-sensorial installation and 35min multi-channel light and sound performance sessions that were open to around 50 audience per each time.
A Turbulent thought
” The seats have been rumbling for quite some time. Fist-clenched, disconcerted eyes roll around the aisles of a run-out mid-size aircraft. The longer and stronger each quake gets, the thicker the angst in the air becomes. Panic hasn’t reached anyone here yet, but every count of breathing feels different as it goes on.
Time freezes and hearts drop when gravity lets go of the bodies of mortal souls. Words cannot express the direness of a vulnerable life’s premonition before THE EVENT. The sound of rattling windows numbs out every chance of feeling safe. No one can help not to feel the questionable inkling of what’s to come. In a second of instant plunge, we land on a space of infinite fall. Closing a set of eyes to seek a moment of peace, darkness embraces and hides the chaos back into its place. Hands together upon tightened knees; with a frightened heart, one might pray for this moment to pass.
It is only the feeling of existence that’s left on this seat in the experience of the unknown and indescribable force. Trembling yet so consciously standing still, shall we dwell on being in the ever-morphing present.”
— Revealing Contingency Space (2020)
Here's to a memory of turbulence that is quite specifically located. Being on a flight to Chiangmai from Bangkok in January 2016, I took a fall that's probably the closest to a free fall for being on a flight, also the longest-lasting in-flight turbulence in my 17 years of experience in traveling altogether. The feeling, the sound, the chaotic silence that is trying to look for a peace in fear, and the smell of being in the event of turbulence are multi-sensorially engrained that day and became something I would never forget. Writing about this experience almost 7 years after the incident, I am asking: is this memory a foreshadowing saga to the forthcoming study and personal obsession about turbulence?
According to William K. George, a physicist and a professor at Imperial college of London, turbulence also a phenomenon bounded by its time and space.
“Turbulence is that state of fluid motion which is characterized by apparently random and chaotic three-dimensional vorticity…Turbulence is not really chaos, at least in the sense of the world that the dynamical systems people use, since turbulent flows are not only time-dependent but space dependent as well… Just like the solutions of non-linear dynamical systems, we believe turbulent solutions to be determined (perhaps uniquely) by their boundary and initial conditions”.
