Ether is a hypothetical medium – supposed by the ancients to fill the heavens, proposed by scientist to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through space. The notion of ‘ocean’ was once as vague. Aristotle perceived of the world as a small place, bounded by a narrow river. Columbus believed the Atlantic was a much shorter distance across than we now know it to be. Even as early electromagnetic telegraphic and wireless transmissions propagating over, under, and through oceans collapsed distances between ships and shores, they revealed vast new oceans – oceans of static, oceans of noise. Etheric Ocean is an underwater web art audio writing noise site. It is an imprecise survey of sounds both animal and mechanical, and of signs both real and imaginary, of distortions born of the difficulty of communicating through the medium of deep dense dark ocean. Like stations dotting a radio dial, murky diagrams, shifting definitions, appropriated texts, nautical associations, and wonky word plays are strung along a very long, horizontally scrolling browser window. This is a world of inversions. Sounds are deep harbours, or are they depths? Sounds purposefully unfold. Out of its element, uncannily airborne, a flying jellyfish drone wobbles about. Noises are made. Islands are Heard.
this sea is nothing in sight but isles.............................................................a company of isles......................................full of fa(i)r sounds......... . . . . . . . . .........................within these sounds we sent our boats..........................................................into the [e(i)ther....................................]................ ..............................................................an etheric ocean................................................an ocean of static........................................................................................an ocean of silence.........................................an ocean of [noise...........................................]. < sounds onclick="likeThis" > [not, a bit, un-] like < /sounds> [ If you can't hear sound here, it's possible that your computer or browser doesn't support the sound file format. Or, that you have your speakers turned off. Or, that you are a land mammal bending you ear to hear sounds deep under water. ] Through its early association with the sea, wireless evoked a slight apprehension over the depthless void technology had revealed to the world. The ether was at once vast and diffuse. Drifting through the spectrum in search of transmissions from the most distant points around the nation and globe was a journey traversed primarily across mysterious expanses of static. [ w h a t I a m c a l l i n g n o i s e ] has an inchoate shape, as weather does.
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