PHONOBLOCKS This project was originally envisioned for a stretch of highway 1 along the California coastline. It begins with the collection of thousands of old unwanted vinyl records. These records are then melted and poured into molds that house functioning turntables. The turntables become submerged and "frozen" inside the cooled, solidified black mass of vinyl. The molds are built to resemble stones with the exception of a small water-tight chamber capable of housing a radio transmitter and battery. While the records once carried information to the needle by means of inscribed grooves, the melted and reformed mass now carries sonic information in a direct, physical and immediate way to the stylus. Surface vibrations are ferried into the needle and transmitted over radio waves into the surrounding environment. Anyone within a few hundred metres of a phonoblock can tune in the radio frequency and hear the sounds and forces acting on these blocks. Melting the records, which are in essence physical sound files, releases their information, destroys it. The medium is still vinyl, the information is still sound, but the past is unrecoverable. Only the present is now communicated through the mass of black plastic. What used to need protection to retain its physical and aural integrity now needs exposure to the elements and external forces to fulfill its function. The reformed records protect the turntable within while feeding it sonic information from the surroundings. These "Phonoblocks" can be placed in environments inhospitable to ordinary turntables, underwater, underground, outdoors, in waterfalls, etc... They can also be oriented in any direction or used in applications where their orientation might change dramatically. They can be arranged as a stage for dance, with each block's signal individually equalized and effected. They can be installed in public stairwells, hallways, or embedded in the asphalt of a busy street. They can be anchored to rocks or set into beach sand, just offshore, to record the daily pulses and vibrations of the tide. I propose to install these turntable blocks in regular intervals along a 10 km stretch of coastline. Those driving by on coastal freeways or living within reach, will be able to tune in the sounds of the tide and pulsing water as they affect the stones placed in tide pools and along the wave battered shoreline. Those driving along the coastline will hear the distinctive sounds of each part of the shore that parallels their journey. As drivers, we can see ahead and behind. It is one of the few places where we are simultaneously aware of the context of our movement through space. However, this awareness is limited, primarily visual, and, out of necessity, focused on the immediate future and past. The "Phonoblocks" expand this awareness, by reinforcing the Present through sound. Participants hear what is immediate but just out of sight. They hear pockets of life and reflections of the earth's energy transformed into light (radio waves) and reconstituted in their personal spaces. The sound will never repeat, but will instead cycle as the tides encroach, submerge, and withdraw. In my mind's ear I envision the sounds of this installation as the earth's improvisations. This project develops a variegated sonic window, building aural constellations from scattered bits of luminous vibration. A new way to heighten awareness of the ever-changing sound field present in our natural surroundings. Since I began my study of Iceland, I have re-envisioned this project as a way to discover the acoustic internal world of the glacier. I'd like to place these sculptures into the internal lakes and rivers, the circulatory system of glaciers, and explore the sounds produced by that system, tapping into and creatively appropriating the resonant sonic fields within these constantly fracturing and compressed rivers of ice. Recordings could be made with glacial transformation providing live accompaniment.