RYAN JORDAN'S DERELICT ELECTRONICS

Ryan Jordan, Derelict Electronics, 2013

UK artist Ryan Jordan takes homegrown tinkering to the next level as he harnesses mineral deposits in rocks to amplify ambient sound. With some fine-tuning, Jordan's "experiment in terrestrial instrumentation" is able to turn these rocks into crude microphones that pick up and amplify subtle changes in sound around them.

Thinking of other artworks in which energy has been harnessed from organic sources, BLDGBLOG's Geoff Manaugh writes evocatively of the potential of these earth-generated projects: "The implication here that we would plug our cities not just into giant slurries of wood pulp, like thick soups of electricity, but also directly into the forests around us, drawing light from the energy of trunks and branches, is yet another extraordinary possibility that designers would do well to take on, imagining what such a scenario literally might look like and how it would technically function, not solely for its cool aesthetic possibilities but for the opportunity to help push our culture of gadgets toward renewable sources of power. Where forests become literal power plants and our everyday farms and back gardens become sites for growing nearly unlimited reserves of electricity."