// new media class


Natalia Rivera — Quiet Cacophony

Concretely Unimaginable — Winter 2020

Quiet cacophony is a sound installation that connects the idea of indeterminacy with the coexistence of audible sounds, presenting the dynamism inside the vacuum with vibrating membranes and generating a soundscape, mainly silent, of the possibilities. Observers can see how the membranes are vibrating but can not listen. To allow some sounds to be heard, meaning some possibilities to become real, the installation will turn on and off vacuum while randomly reproducing a unique frequency.

The exploration of “Concretely Unimaginable” took me to some ideas from quantum physics and focused on the concept of indeterminacy, based on a beautiful text by the physicist and philosopher Karen Barad called: What is the measure of nothingness? In her thoughts, she presents how difficult it is for us to understand/imagine the vacuum concept and how quantum physics showed us that the vacuum, the nothingness, is actually at the same time the infinity.

Indeterminacy, the coexistence of all possibilities being-not being simultaneously, as the very nature of nature, is presented through a “quiet cacophony of all sounds.”

Thanks to:
Jose David Ruiz- Scientific Advice
Juan Diego Rivera - Video
Juan Felipe Fernández - Sound
Suratómica Network