Meet Bruce Odland | CHERP Solar Works Artist Profile

Bruce Odland is a sound artist - a self-described sonic thinker - dedicated to helping CHERP humanize our factory workplace environment. He believes ears have a unique way to offer information on culture, the environment, and humanity. Dedicated to “understanding the sounds we make as a culture and making them more humane” the CHERP factory will serve as an ideal test site for transforming industrial soundscapes...into harmonic music.” Unlike sounds in nature, factory and city noises are discordant to human brains; Odland’s inventive sound system will change that paradigm for our workers.

Odland‘s sound installations provoke thinking with one’s ears – something Odland identifies with on personal and artistic levels. Based on his previous body of work with Sam Auinger, (O+A) transforming urban noise, Odland will adapt his proprietary system to the CHERP factory. By applying his Harmonic Sound Cloud System to the CHERP factory, he will "harmonically tune the ambient sounds" of the factory "into a tuned overtone series in real-time." Put another way, he will take factory noises, mitigate them, and transform them into fluid, soothing harmonious musical tones.

At the CHERP factory, Odland's Harmonic Sound Cloud System will collect sounds via microphones that transmit them to a control room. Once there, the sounds run though "virtual tuning tubes' - blended into a harmonious tone.

Microphones located inside the CHERP factory will collect both the workplace sounds transmitted through the air, and direct vibrations of machines at the source.

These sounds are sent to a computer where the O+A virtual tuning application transforms them into harmonious tones - all in real-time.

The musically transformed sounds will then be sent back instantly to speakers in the factory. Since sound travels electronically faster than the speed of sound through the air, work noises from one station will arrive as harmony to the other areas, arriving just before the actual noise. "creating a calming…serene…detailed……..musical version" of sounds.

In addition to sound-transforming technology, the Harmonic Sound Cloud System includes noise mitigating structures suspended over each work area to reduce overall factory noise and human assembly sounds near their source. The clouds are built of acoustically absorptive foam suspended in an aluminum grid. These "clouds" hold the absorptive acoustic panels, the speakers playing back harmonically treated sounds from other parts of the factory and the microphones for sound collection.

Odland's previous works well-represent what he will achieve at the CHERP factory. A collaboration with fellow CHERP artist, Peter Erskine, in Rome, Italy, in 1991 enhanced Odland's understanding of recognizing acoustic focal points, patterns of sound, and the power of harmonic tones to, "alter people's moods." Odland has applied his passion and processes to projects in New York City; Los Angeles: Bruges, Belgium; and Zurich, Switzerland, among other locations around the world.

Help us make this project a reality. Funds are needed to install Bruce's system and flood our factory with his harmonious sounds.