Kies multichannel sound installation, gravel bed, vibration motors, 10 min · 2026

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A gravel bed becomes a transmission medium. The starting point is the way insects communicate through substrate: by tapping, rubbing and trembling they set plants, wood and soil vibrating. 

Under the gravel, thirty-two vibration motors move individual stones. Crackling, clicking, trickling; short tremors gather, shift and disperse. Some passages are composed, some generative, while others are transcribed or derived from field recordings of substrate-borne insect signals.

For the version presented at the HBK Braunschweig Rundgang, a track for 32 loudspeakers was added, built from the hiss of the amplifiers driving the piece, cars passing outside the room, and the plastic sacks relaxing after the gravel had been emptied from them. It is spatialised across the room and remains barely audible.