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Statement
Human nature and western culture conspire to keep us skimming safely along on the surface of things. But right here under our noses, just beyond the reach of our senses, is a rich and sacred realm where beauty and death live side-by-side, where joy meets danger. The artist is the messenger; his or her task is to dive deep into the heart of what is hidden, to uncover its truth and meaning and, using whatever media are at hand, to interpret and share those discoveries with anyone who wishes to hear.
In writing, music, sound design, alteration of found objects, and in life I welcome opportunities to upend the familiar and the rote, to expose those secret layers of meaning that surround us constantly. By combining digital audio technology with simple installation designs, I try to bring slivers of those semi-conscious realms into the tangible immediacy of the here and now. The sound of a New England woodland stream is stretched and squeezed into something alien, yet still musical. The minute sounds of an active ant colony are amplified to fill a room. A walk-through installation places the listener at the center of the Earth, enveloped in a sea of ordinarily inaudible natural seismic sound. By shifting the observer’s point of view, by altering the listener’s scales of time and space, I hope to cobble together a few guideposts to mark the trail that leads into the vast interior terrain that we all share.
I excavate in dreams and dirt in hopes of finding gold and truth, love and laughter. There is wonder here.
Recent projects
- Earth Sound (2007)
- Audio CD based on the natural vibrations of planet Earth.
- Deep Earth Dome / Stratum 1: Breath
- If you could stand at the Earth’s center, what would you hear? This walk-through immersive sound installation reveals the natural vibrations of the Earth, as recorded by a global network of seismometers.
- A Gallery of Altercated Objects (November-December 2006, Joy Street Artists Studios)
- Found & altered objects, conceptual works on paper, sound.
- Time Zone
- An installation of 24 simultaneously playing shortwave and broadcast-band radios.
Press
(2008.02.13)- “Ascolto la sinfonia segreta che fa vibrare il Pianeta Terra” (”Listening to the hidden symphony which vibrates Planet Earth”) by Monica Mazotto.
- (2008.01.21)
- “The internal ‘orchestra’ of the earth” by Billy Baker.
Earthwatch Radio (2007.05.21)- “Sounds of the Earth: A retired scientist finds beauty in sounds from the center of the earth” by John Karl.
National Public Radio “All Things Considered” (2006.12.14)- “Letters: Personal Finance, and Mushrooms” :: NPR listener Kurt Alred of Hancock, Michigan, offers his reflections in response to the sounds from the Deep Earth Dome. Starts at 03:16.
- National Public Radio “All Things Considered” (2006.12.12)
- “Hearing Earth: Rumblings of a Complex Planet” :: an NPR SoundClip, based on sounds from the Deep Earth Dome.
Bio
John Bullitt (b. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1956) has been a student of sound and of the Earth for many years. He briefly studied piano and composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and graduated in 1980 with a degree in physics from Grinnell College, where he built the college’s first seismograph. After receiving an MA in geophysics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1982, he joined the research staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he continued postgraduate studies in geophysics and conducted basic and applied research into the nature of seismic wave propagation in the Earth’s interior. During this period he also taught physics at Bentley College and worked as a freelance computer consultant and software designer. He made his first audio realizations of earthquake sounds in 1986 on an Apple Macintosh computer. Around 1988 he left his scientific career to study Buddhist philosophy.
His Buddhist studies led him, in 1993, to launch Access to Insight, a major online repository and publisher of Buddhist texts, of which he continues to serve as editor. He also serves as editor of SuttaReadings, an audio archive of classic Buddhist texts, selected and read aloud by contemporary teachers in the Theravada Buddhist tradition.
Throughout these years he has continued to pursue his sonic and musical interests, including composing musical themes for a Boston radio station, making recordings of ambient sounds from natural and urban environments, and writing contemporary folk songs, which he has performed at a number of Boston-area folk music venues. In 2003 he resumed his explorations of the natural sounds of the Earth.
Partial list of publications
- John Bullitt, The Emergence of Meaning from Observations of Studio Mass Accumulation, Journal of Tangible Intuitions, Vol 8, No. 3 (March, 2008; in press)
. . .
- Toksöz, M.N., A.M. Dainty and J.T. Bullitt, A prototype earthquake warning system for strike-slip earthquakes, Pure and Appl. Geophys., 133, 475-487, 1990.
- Toksöz, M.N., A.M. Dainty, J.T. Bullitt and R. Cicerone, Real-time earthquake warning, Proc. Workshop XLVI: The 7th U.S.-Japan Seminar on Earthquake Prediction, USGS Open-File Report 90-98, pp. 163-173, 1990.
- Bullitt, J.T. and M.N. Toksöz, Three-dimensional ultrasonic modeling of Rayleigh wave propagation, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 75, 1087-1104, 1985.
- Bullitt, J.T. and V.F. Cormier, The relative performance of mb and alternative measures of elastic energy in estimating source size and explosion yield, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 74, 1863-1882, 1984.
Apologies & gratitude
Design, management & content of this website is entirely my fault — except for the nice photos of me, which are by Jane.
Yay WordPress!
FWIW
A note to Google-snoopers & NSA spooks: Here are some things that I am not: a restaurant on Long Island; a late 60’s British dance band or DJ; a former big-game hunter in a 1962 film, played by Trevor Howard; a cop in a 1968 film, played by Steve McQueen (his name is Frank, anyway); a Harvard professor of 18th century English literature; an attorney for the plaintiff in a 1914 US Supreme Court case; a computer consultant in nearby Waltham, MA. But then again, maybe I am all those things. If you manage to figure it all out, let me know.
