Bill Fontana, Wind Turbine at Chelker Reservoir, 2005
EARTH WORKS
glaciers. While field trips can sonically preserve an environment and facilitate transmission to a wider audience, they also affect it in a potentially damaging way. Questioning such literal engagement with endangered environments is part of the continued work of the Centre for Land Use Interpretation, based in California. CLUI assess the interactions of humans with the Earth’s surface through projects involving fences, underground land use and The Sound Emitting Device Program, consisting of an “on-going series of outdoor site installations that alter the landscape by the infusion of a sonic element”. Installed at remote sites across America since 1994, the sounds emanating from these simple solar-powered Sound Emitting Devices are specially created to reflect the history and context of each site: the sound of running water at a drained lake in California, a tree falling in a Maine forest. Each device runs on tape loop, small amplifier and speaker, cased in a waterproof steel container. Once installed they are added to CLUI’s map and only sporadically retrieved when they stop functioning. In this way, the devices are left to become part of the environment they were designed to reflect. CLUI’s approach to the environment reflects America’s large land mass. By contrast, the British interdisciplinary project Positive Soundscapes evaluates sound within the context of built-up, urban environments. Including research and sound art works by Peter Cusack and Angus Carlyle, Positive Soundscapes attempted to shift awareness and policy of ambient sounds from the negatively labelled ‘noise’ towards a practice of planning and appreciating soundscapes in a positive manner. Meanwhile, interdisciplinarity is at the heart of Dubai-based competition Land Art Generator Initiative. The brainchild of American artists Robert Ferry and Elizabeth