Brian House

Infrasound and the Planetary Imaginary / Brian House You can’t hear infrasound, but it’s everywhere, traveling thousands of miles, carrying signals from oceans, storms, turbines and collapsing ice. @h0use builds infrasonic “macrophones” to make unsound audible. Not to measure, but to listen. Join us at the @shelemay_sound_lab on the 24th April 2026 for a spatialised presentation of infrasonic field recordings. Free tickets via the link in bio.

It’s a delight to highlight the fourth cluster in our special issue Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard.” PERFORMATIVE ACTIONS: /article/id/20309/ Whale Bone, Alexandra Lockhart @aelock12 [image 1] Supporting Love, Leonor Anthony @leonoranthonyartist Sergei Chernikov with Yeti Mask, Harley Cowan @harleycowan The Things We Bring, Joan Albaugh @joanalbaugh [image 2] The Cuban Flag, Leonor Anthony [image 3] Anchorage at Sallyhamna; Svalbard Global Seed Vault; Jäderin Expedition Landing Marker, 1898, Harley Cowan [image 4] Macrophones; Body of Air: On Infrasound and Sensing Crisis, Brian House @h0use [image 5] Our contributors were drawn to the permanent and impermanent Performative Actions taken by visitors to Svalbard over the centuries. Dancer and choreographer Alexandra Lockhart shows how the body responds to the natural environment in a still from Whale Bone, for instance. Leonor Anthony laid claim to a Norwegian hunter’s shelter at Sallyhamna by planting the Cuban flag, and extended her ongoing project Supporting Love, in which she suspended a line of bras from Antigua’s mast. Sound artist Brian House’s Macrophones is a recording of atmospheric infrasound, or sound waves with frequencies well below human audibility; the macrophone he built allows a listener (pictured here, guide Sarah Gerats) to listen to the infrasound of a Svalbard glacier. Link to full issue in bio; eds. @hesterblum @artist.cjensen @jacindarussellart

Out today: NETWORK FRICTION I began collaborating with Marcel and Annie (two of my favorite artists) during the pandemic, passing beats back and forth. Then we started using the network in between to distort the audio; the same temporal weirdnesses everyone was experiencing on Zoom. The result invoked ‘90s glitch, but this time the scale was bigger, it was the infrastructure that was doing the glitching (and we were on three different continents, so lots of opportunity). That work turned into an installation that we toured for a few years. And then we had the obvious thought—why not release a record? Thanks to @_jordumb and Editions Verde for making it happen. It’s a quick turnaround from Everyday Infrasound, but I really like the resonance between the two records. They’re both about big phenomena changing the planet that sit somewhere below our perception. And concept aside, this one has some heavy beats. Info below, link in bio. / Network Friction New Release by Aries House Zaes
EV017 on Editions Verde (@editionsverde ), New York
Vinyl + digital Three turntables stream to an online meeting from three different locations spread out across the globe (Amherst, United States; Bern, Switzerland; Shenzhen, China). Following a score, the artists select from lock-grooves on a collaboratively produced record. The pieces that result are the product of the particular network conditions through which the three streams combine. Produced, performed, and recorded by Annie Aries (@annieruefenacht ), Brian House (@h0use ), Marcel Zaes Mixing and mastering by Benoît Piccand (@benoitpiccand ). Graphic Design by Sandra Schmid. © by Aries / House / Zaes & Editions Verde, 2026. / EV017 NETWORK FRICTION – SIDE A 10:00
NETWORK FRICTION – SIDE B 10:00 #glitch #networkinfrastructure #vinyl #soundart #arttechnology

For the past year+, I've been in conversation with the singular Jeff Hazboun, astrophysicist with NANOGrav (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves), as an LL Stewart Fellow. Jeff studies immense disturbances in the topology of spacetime by measuring infinitesimal shifts in the timing of distant pulsars. Measuring pulsars requires collating data from instruments across the country and inferring patterns that fall below typical thresholds of error. I'm fascinated by the idea that the interplay between waves, pulses, and spatio-temporal inference in Jeff's work can be analogized—in a non-trivial way—by structures in music. So I'm making software for a musical scoring system that works on some of the same principles. It's not a sonification thing, it's a means of composition in which periodic pulses—akin to pulsars—can be deformed by graphically introducing temporal disturbances, such as low-frequency gravity waves. Complex compound waves emerge, akin to the "stochastic background" of gravitational disturbances uncovered by Jeff's research. These waves are too low-frequency to be perceived as tones; instead, we understand them through rhythmic inference as the composition unfolds. A work-in-progress is currently on display at @oregonstateprax for the current "Currents: Experiments in Art-Science Collaboration" exhibition, up through March, curated by @ashleyontheinternet . #pulsar #artscience #composition #graphicscore #musictech

Infrasound and the planetary imaginary: Making the changing atmosphere audible through infrasonic listening /node/20851 Audio paper by Brian House – part of Seismograf Peer’s series SOUND AND THE MORE-THAN-HUMAN WORLDS Even though you can’t hear it, infrasound fills the #air. And because the #atmosphere doesn’t absorb it as readily as regular sound, infrasound comes from hundreds, if not thousands, of #miles away. If #humans could perceive frequencies #lower than 20 Hz, then changing #ocean currents, wildfires, turbines, receding glaciers, industrial HVACs, superstorms, and other geophysical and anthropogenic entanglements taking place across the globe would shape our imagination of the planet’s very nature. In my research, I’ve developed infrasonic »macrophones« to make infrasound audible. Comprising wind-noise reduction arrays leading to microbarometers and using custom signal processing, I’ve appropriated the basic technique from what the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization uses to detect distant warhead tests. In this case, however, we’re listening to a planet in transition. Unlike with a scientific endeavor, it’s not a matter of extending the horizon of human knowledge. Instead, it’s about encountering agencies greater than our own that connect us through the atmosphere, an experience that is both poetic and political. This paper features ambient atmospheric infrasound recorded with Macrophones installed in the woods near Amherst, Massachusetts. I sped up the recording by a factor of 60, raising the pitch by ~6 octaves into a range perceptible by humans. I played this audio to residents of Amherst in a controlled listening environment; excerpts of their reactions are also included. #planet #human #nonhuman #more #musica #musician #musik #musically #soundart #art #artistic #research #academia #listen #audiopaper #audio #paper #danish #culture #kultur

For the last several years, I’ve been working to capture ambient atmospheric infrasound, sound that’s always around us but too low-frequency for us to ordinarily hear. The endeavor has come to mean a lot of things to me; it’s about the pandemic, it’s about my chronic illness, it’s about parenthood, and it’s about bearing witness to this radically uncertain moment for the planet and our political failure to meet it. In any case, I don’t think I’ve ever worked on something this hard, and the project itself is far from complete. BUT I am very pleased to say that there is now a record! And it’s a really strange and largely unprecedented one, so if you know any writers, radio people, journalists etc that might be into it, please help me get it out there? Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World Digital and 180g deluxe vinyl Preorder available now, link in bio Official release November 7th on @gruenrekorder Album release party 10/30 in NYC at @fridmangallery Mastering by @splnlss , design by @partnerandpartners , support from @creative_capital , 📸 @abbyckong #infrasound #soundart #geophysics #atmosphere #artandecology

Two entities pulse in a regular rhythm. If they can “hear” each other, they will eventually fall into sync. We can observe this phenomenon throughout nature and culture — in the sounds of crickets, the lights of fireflies, the cells of your heart, a clapping audience, the lockstep of soldiers, or the chant of a protest. We synchronize into groups, but the process is never entirely complete or stable. In Synchronizing Uncertainty, Brian House invites visitors into a space populated with hundreds of electronic circuits generating periodic, oscillating signals — each pulses with its own light and synthesized sound. During the exhibition’s three-month span, the circuits attempt to find an elusive equilibrium — ever-changing as visitors move through the space, disrupting the system into a cascade of rhythms as it renegotiates polyrhythmic difference. ArtYard is open 11 AM to 5 PM Wednesday to Sunday and until 7 on Thursdays. Admission is always free. Learn more at artyard.org #artyard #brianhouse #synchronizinguncertainty #exhibition #njarts #lovefrenchtown #artofscience

🔊🔊 Making progress at @artyardcenter ! Each of these is an autonomous oscillator circuit, and they can hear each other — they figure out how to synchronize, forming groups that are disrupted when visitors move about… thankful to get to work with this fantastic team. Opening 6/21, runs through 9/21 #pulsecoupledoscillation #immersiveinstallation #artandecology #soundart

🔊🔊 These weeks have been nonstop building and testing oscillator circuits for my upcoming show at @artyardcenter #pulsecoupledoscillation #immersiveinstallation #artandecology #soundart