22 / 25·Sound & Audio
ERG
Desert acoustics. The dune that booms at 84 hertz.
About the work
A field-recording site about singing sand. Saltation grains hop downwind across layered dune ridges, and triggering an avalanche fires both a visible ring impulse and a genuine sub-bass boom — an oscillator sweeping 84 to 62 hertz, the measured range.
How it was made
The boom frequency comes from the literature on booming dunes, not taste. The grains' hop physics were tuned until the surface crawled the way saltation footage does, and the audio needed a gain envelope pass to boom without clipping.
Like every work in the exhibition, it passed three full iteration passes — a visual critique, a deepening pass, and a QA pass at 390px with reduced motion and zero console errors — and documents itself in its own build guide.
Key features
- 2,400 saltation grains hopping on the wind profile
- Dune ridges as layered harmonic sine silhouettes
- Avalanche boom: ring impulse plus real 84→62Hz sweep
- Field-notebook typography and heat palette
Technology
- Canvas particles
- Web Audio API
- Procedural terrain
In its own light
