Loki’s Pain

Sonification installation-sculpture

Commissioned by Indra and Harry Banga Gallery, Hong Kong 2021.

Loki’s Pain is an immersive, sculptural sonification installation of live earthquake data. Visitors take the place of Viking god Loki, who is chained underground and tormented with dripping venom; his painful writhing is the cause of earthquakes. Dodochahedron sculpture, loudspeakers, amplifiers, and software were designed by Lindborg, who also did the aluminium construction assisted by Abby Yuen. Loki’s Pain extends on Pacific Belltower (Lindborg 2017) by retrieving real-time internet seismology data for audio synthesis in Max using modalys~. The NIME paper accompanied a virtual presentation of the installation, while the ICAD paper describes the sonification method in detail and evaluates it in on-site listening tests.

  • Lindborg PM (2021/06). “Feeling Loki’s Pain: Designing and Evaluating a DIY 3D Auditory Display”. Proceedings of International Conference on Auditory Displays (ICAD), https://icad2021.icad.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ICAD_2021_4.pdf. 
  • Lindborg PM (2021/06). “Loki’s Pain”. Proceedings of New Instruments for Musical Expression Conference (NIME). Shanghai, China and the Internet (virtual presentation of the artwork during Covid-19 lockdown), https://doi.org/10.21428/92fbeb44.48562f92 . 
  • Lindborg PM (2020/11). Loki’s Pain, sixteen-channel immersive sonification of earthquake data. Indra and Harry Banga Gallery, ArtMachine Past/Present Exhibition, 24 Nov. 2020 – 23 May 2021, CityUHK, https://www.cityu.edu.hk/bg/exhibitions/art-machines.
  • Lindborg PM (2020/11). Loki’s Pain, immersive sonification of earthquake data and sculptural custom-built aluminium dodecahedron structure, with sixteen-channel playback system.

Screenshot

Data processing and sonification mapping strategy; see ICAD paper.

The demo is also viewable at: https://vimeo.com/509611598