Radio Program Archives - Energy Fields

Fundamental Resonance is a broadcast series that posits a new approach to the audition of acoustic, mechanical, and electromagnetic vibrations. Each episode combines an audio essay with a soundscape, composed of examples of the phenomena discussed, as a way to explore the unreachable, reveal the hidden, and manifest what lies beyond the senses.

Fundamental Resonance is produced by Sam Rowell and will be broadcast on Lookout FM. Broadcasts can be heard online at Lookout FM and on terrestrial radio on KFQM-LP 101.5 FM Pacific Palisades. A podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Episodes will be released weekly from September 15 - November 3.

Sunday, Nov 3. 2024: Radio Ears

This program delves into the sounds of Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere. With the Earth’s magnetic field acting as a natural waveguide, both man-made signals and natural phenomena can be heard across the radio spectrum. Using radio as translator, invisible phenomena manifest as auditory experiences, allowing a glimpse at the unseen electromagnetic tapestry that surrounds each of us in our daily lives.

Featured sounds: lightning (spherics and whistlers), cosmic background radiation, the Earth’s magnetic field, space weather, radar, auroras, meteors, sun storms, and the magnetic field that protects the Earth from solar radiation, the Van Allen Belt.

Sunday, Oct 27, 2024: Electromagnetic Field Recordings

This program features a trip around Los Angeles recording the electromagnetic landscape using a wide-band radio receiver. Rather than being designed to help pick up a particular frequency, as a standard FM radio would, the SOMA Ether “anti-radio” picks up all electromagnetic signals in the air around it and converts them to sound.

Sunday, Oct 20, 2024: Seeking with Sound: Detectors

This program explores the sonic signatures created by techniques of detecting with sound as well as the sounds made by detectors. Bat detectors, geiger counters, electroreception, metal detectors, archeoacoustics, and sonar are discussed and auditioned in this survey of the technologies, methods, and techniques used in sonic detection.

Sunday, Oct 13, 2024: Infrasound

Infrasound refers to sound waves with frequencies below 20 Hz, which are too low for the human ear to detect. These waves are produced naturally by various sources such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storms, and meteor impacts, as well as by anthropogenic sources like industrial machinery, wind turbines, and weapons. This program describes the ways infrasound has been observed and documented throughout history, the effects, and the ways it is recorded and made audible, with a detour into the aesthetics of the technological mediation of inaudible sound.

Sunday, Oct 6, 2024: Internal Medicine: Anechoic Chamber and Medical Sonification

This program delves into the auditory landscape of the human body, examining the sounds of the body experienced within an anechoic chamber with the outputs of medical devices.

In an anechoic chamber—a room meticulously designed to eliminate all echoes and external noise—external silence becomes an almost physical force and the inner sounds of the working body emerge: the steady thump of a heartbeat, the subtle rush of blood through veins, and even the faint hum of the nervous system.

Medical technologies used to translate the body's hidden vibrations into audible data also serve to make the inaudible audible. Ultrasound, EEG, MRI, and stethoscopes reveal the intricate workings of the human body, transforming subtle physiological processes into sonic diagnoses.

Sunday, Sep 29: Deep Listening: Submarine Surveillance, the SOFAR channel, and the Sanctuary Sound Program

This program explores the transformation of a secret military surveillance network into a crucial scientific tool for ocean exploration, and an anomalous feature of a certain part of the ocean that started it all. During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy developed the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), using underwater hydrophones to detect Soviet submarines by listening to the ocean. This technology, originally designed for surveillance, has since been repurposed for scientific research.

The hydrophones that once monitored the oceans for Soviet submarine activity now form the keystone of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sanctuary Soundscape Monitoring Project (SanctSound) and are vital tools for understanding marine life, monitoring earthquake and volcano activity, and enforcing nuclear test bans.

Sunday, Sep 22, 2024: Studying the Sun from the Inside Out

This program explores how scientists use sound to gain new insights about the Sun. By converting data from the Sun's electromagnetic fields into sound through a process called sonification, scientists are able to "listen" to the Sun's energy, offering a unique way to study the complex processes happening deep within its core.

Sunday, Sep 15, 2024:  Sonic Cartographies

Before there were any stars or galaxies, 13.8 billion years ago, our universe was just a ball of hot plasma -- a mixture of electrons, protons, and light. This program explains what we hear when we listen to “sounds from space” and the ways in which scientific study of the distribution and metamorphosis of the original energetic content of the “Big Bang” has enabled the mapping of the cosmos.