Grainy black-and-white film still showing a person’s arm and hand near a circular wall fixture, with reflections and shadowy interior forms in the background.

FM: Paranormal

public art / installations

2021
Frozen Music: David Dunn, René Barge and Gustavo Matamoros
Three-channel site-specific sound installation
Three independently looping parts | approximately 20 minutes each
Commissioned by curator Melissa Diaz for Homemaking
April 17–June 13, 2021
Richmond Cottage, Deering Estate, Palmetto Bay, Florida

Featured image: Still from TAYIBAHW, a film by Charles Recher. Used by permission of the Estate of Charles Recher.

FM: Paranormal is a site-specific installation created by Frozen Music from ultrasonic activity recorded during one overnight investigation of the Richmond Cottage at Deering Estate.

Melissa Diaz commissioned Frozen Music to develop a work for Homemaking, the Estate’s 2021 spring exhibition. After touring the grounds and learning about accounts of paranormal activity associated with the Richmond Cottage, I proposed that we approach the building by listening beyond the range of ordinary human hearing.

The title uses paranormal literally as well as playfully: the project sought acoustic activity occurring outside our normal perceptual range. We were not attempting to prove the presence of supernatural phenomena. We wanted to discover what our instruments might register in the building that our ears could not.

RECORDING THE COTTAGE

René Barge and I spent one night inside the Richmond Cottage. We concentrated on its central staircase and on several locations where unusual activity had reportedly occurred.

Our equipment included ultrasonic transducers designed by David Dunn, Earthworks microphones capable of capturing frequencies above 50 kHz, piezoelectric contact microphones attached to the wooden structure, and a digital recorder. The contact microphones listened to vibrations traveling through the building, while the ultrasonic microphones registered acoustic events extending beyond approximately 20 kHz.

The recordings contained relatively few ultrasonic events, and their sources remain unidentified. Their sources remain unidentified: they may have originated in the environment, the wooden structure or the recording system itself. Whatever their origins, they were signals registered above the range of unaided human hearing.

David participated remotely. The same source recordings were shared among all three members of Frozen Music, and each of us independently composed one approximately twenty-minute mono part. In my own part, I also incorporated resonant frequencies discovered by exciting and measuring the cottage staircase.

Dimly lit upper-floor hallway in the Richmond Cottage, with recording equipment on the floor and an illuminated wooden staircase beyond.
Recording ultrasonic signals from near the Richmond Cottage staircase during the overnight recording session for FM: Paranormal, 2021.

THE INSTALLATION

The three parts were reproduced through three independent media players and three self-powered speakers—one player and speaker for each artist. Their different loops ran simultaneously and continually during public hours, producing combinations that changed as the parts moved in and out of alignment.

The speakers were placed around the L-shaped third-floor hallway surrounding the entrance staircase. That floor was closed to visitors, and the speakers were difficult to see from below unless someone deliberately searched for them. Their sounds descended through the stairwell into the publicly accessible parts of the cottage.

Rather than presenting a clearly located object, FM: Paranormal occupied the building as a dense but subtle field of sound. The installation was eerie yet pleasant: transformed ultrasonic events, structural vibrations and staircase resonances appeared to emanate from somewhere above the limits of public access.

Second-floor plan of the Richmond Cottage with red arrows marking circulation and the staircase leading toward the third-floor hallway used for the installation.
Second-floor plan of the Richmond Cottage supplied by Deering Estate. The lower red arrow identifies the staircase through which sounds from the third-floor installation traveled into the occupied areas below.

FROZEN MUSIC

Frozen Music is an experimental sound collective formed by David Dunn, René Barge and Gustavo Matamoros. Its performances and installations use sound as a stimulus for investigating the behavior of architecture, environments and interconnected systems.

Read more about Frozen Music.

CREDITS

Created by Frozen Music: David Dunn, René Barge and Gustavo Matamoros
Commissioned by: Melissa Diaz for Homemaking
Ultrasonic transducer design: David Dunn
Overnight recording session: René Barge and Gustavo Matamoros
Site: Richmond Cottage, Deering Estate
Featured image: Still from TAYIBAHW by Charles Recher, used by permission of the Estate of Charles Recher
Presented April 17–June 13, 2021
Copyright © 2021 Subtropics Editions