Resonant Matter
How the inner life of metals becomes audible when corrosion is treated as a composer rather than a flaw.
From silent surface to speaking material
Resonant Matter began as a simple question about the boundary between silence and sound. When a sheet of steel, copper, or aluminum hangs in a quiet room, it appears still and voiceless. Yet on a microscopic level, atoms are constantly leaving and rearranging, forming oxides, pits, and fragile films. The installations in this series are designed to listen to that rearrangement. Sensitive pickups attached to the metals translate electrochemical change into low frequency vibrations, lifting an inaudible process into the spectrum of human hearing. The pieces do not overlay music onto the surfaces; they reveal what is already happening in the material itself.
Each work starts with a bare plate suspended in a controlled environment. No lacquer is applied, no sealant interrupts the exposure to air and moisture. Instead, the metal is left vulnerable by design. Small variations in humidity or temperature cause distinct, measurable shifts in corrosion rate. Those shifts appear as slow drifts in pitch, as tremors in volume, as sudden clicks when a tiny fracture opens. In the gallery, these changes feel like the room is breathing. What once seemed inanimate begins to develop a subtle voice, a presence that grows more complex the longer it is allowed to rust.
Electrochemistry as a score
The scientific backbone of Resonant Matter lies in electrochemistry. Corrosion is fundamentally an exchange of electrons between metal and its environment. When iron, for example, encounters oxygen and water, it gives up electrons and forms iron oxides. This exchange generates tiny potentials that can be measured as voltage differences along the surface. In the installations, those potentials are captured through an array of contact points and routed into custom electronics that map them to sound. Rather than forcing the data into fixed scales or melodies, the system focuses on preserving the raw contour of the change, the way values rise and fall over time.
Engineers working on the project describe the mapping process as drawing a line between two invisible domains. On one side is the world of metal fatigue, ion migration, and chemical gradients. On the other is the world of vibration, resonance, and human perception. The circuitry sits between those domains and acts like a translator. When the corrosion accelerates, the sound darkens or swells. When the reaction slows, the tone thins out and retreats into the background. Over hours and days, the installation writes a score that no one could have composed in advance, because the exact path of the reaction is impossible to predict.
Material personalities and timbre
Different metals produce distinct sonic signatures. Mild steel tends to generate a broad, grounding hum that feels connected to infrastructure and machinery. Its corrosion creates layers of oxide that deepen the tone, like dust collecting in the throat of a bell. Copper, by contrast, speaks in more delicate gestures. As it oxidizes into blues and greens, its electrical behavior becomes more intricate, scattering harmonics and producing flickers of higher partials. Aluminum often sits between these extremes, its voice crisp but fragile, prone to sudden bright bursts when a small area breaks down.
These differences are not imposed through effects or equalizers. They arise from the inherent properties of the materials and their relationship with the surrounding air. Visitors walking through a Resonant Matter installation encounter these personalities as overlapping zones of sound. Standing near the steel plate, one feels a low pressure that seems to settle into the bones. Moving toward the copper, the ear catches a more agile shimmer, a pattern that never quite repeats itself. The room becomes a map of metallurgical character, not in terms of hardness or tensile strength, but in terms of timbre and motion.
Spatial choreography of rust
The physical arrangement of the works is carefully composed to encourage slow exploration. Plates are suspended at different heights, so that some hover near the floor while others hang at eye level or above. This vertical staggering changes how sound wraps around the body. Low drones from one surface mix with midrange textures from another, creating pockets of interference and harmony. Rather than standing in a single sweet spot, visitors are encouraged to drift, letting their bodies act like antennas that sample different combinations of decay.
Light plays a complementary role in this choreography. Warm, lantern-like fixtures cast soft gradients across the rusting surfaces, emphasizing the texture of pits and streaks. As the oxides thicken, the way they catch light changes, producing new highlights and shadows. This visual evolution parallels the auditory one. The same area of metal that yesterday reflected a sharp glint may today appear matte and granular, and the sound emerging from that zone will have shifted as well. Over time, the room becomes a living diagram of transformation, every surface carrying both a visible and an audible record of its own change.
Time scales and listening habits
Resonant Matter unfolds across multiple time scales simultaneously. On the microscopic level, electrons move rapidly, and chemical reactions can spike in seconds. On the human level, corrosion appears slow, revealing itself only after days or weeks. The installations bridge these scales by linking the fast internal events to sound while letting the larger arc remain visible on the metal itself. A visitor spending twenty minutes in the gallery might notice only gentle swells and soft tremors, yet those small shifts are part of a much longer story that continues long after they leave.
This temporal layering asks for a different kind of attention than the one people often bring to sound art. Instead of waiting for a clear beginning or a climactic moment, listeners are invited to settle into the ongoingness of the process. Many describe the experience as meditative. There is no need to track every detail; the impression of continuity is enough. Others return on multiple days, curious to hear how the space has changed. They begin to recognize certain tones as familiar, like voices they have heard before in a different mood. In this way, the project encourages a practice of slow listening that extends beyond the gallery into everyday life.
Entropy as collaborator
Underlying the entire project is a deliberate choice to treat entropy not as an enemy but as a collaborator. In industrial settings, corrosion represents cost, risk, and failure. It must be prevented, monitored, or repaired. Resonant Matter does not deny these realities, but it reframes them. By allowing decay to direct the shape of the sound, the installations highlight the creative potential within processes usually associated only with loss. The rusting surfaces become partners in composition, contributing gestures that the artists could never have planned.
This collaboration requires a willingness to relinquish control. There is no exact way to know how far a plate will corrode in a given period, or when a sudden shift will appear. The team can prepare materials, configure sensors, and tune amplifiers, but the final texture belongs to the chemistry. Accepting this uncertainty changes the way the work is evaluated. Success is no longer defined by reproducing a specific outcome. Instead, it is measured by the depth and clarity with which the process reveals itself. If visitors leave with a sense that matter itself has spoken, then the collaboration has worked.
Echoes beyond the gallery
Although Resonant Matter lives inside carefully controlled spaces, its implications stretch outward. Many of the metals used in the installations resemble those found in bridges, railings, hulls, and industrial artifacts that weather in cities and coastlines. Listening to their corrosion in the gallery can change how people perceive these everyday objects. A rusting fence may start to feel less like a neglected surface and more like a quiet instrument that has been playing for years. A corroded pillar may read as an archive of storms, seasons, and contact, each stain a verse in a long slow song.
The project has sparked conversations with architects, conservators, and environmental scientists who see potential in using sonified corrosion data to monitor infrastructure. While the installations remain art first, they point toward practical applications. The delicate contours of sound might reveal changes that visual inspection alone would miss. In this sense, Resonant Matter occupies a threshold between poetic listening and applied sensing. It suggests that our relationship with the built environment could become more attentive if we treated materials not only as structures but as storytellers.