Seismic Flame Speaker  in a Photoplasma

I want to create a light and sound sculpture made of plasma and ionized gas that predicts earthquakes and volcanoes. Many institutes  and universities have placed seismic sensitive equipment through out the world at key volcanoes and faultlines to monitor movement. Some geologist have tried to develop systems to forecast seismic activity involving variables such as the gravitational pull of lunar cycles (solar eclipses influence seismic activity), and solar flare's effects on the earth's geomagnetic field.  If you could compile all this data in a real time sense and develop a program that will analyze it to look for patterns or activity and if all the factors have been met to forecast a high possibility of earthquakes for a particular area the flame will begin to whistle and rumble.

Volcano Eruption and Earthquake Forecast through Sound



lava channels

Sources of Seismic Data
  1. Underwater Acoustics for detection of earthquakes and volcanoes in the worlds oceans
  2. Seismic equipment
  3. USGS Near realtime "shakemaps"


Artists that work with seismic activity

Jo Ann Gillerman and Rob Terry: The Sun Drops its Torch, an interactive event involving an eclipse and lava flow that happened at the same time.
Andrew Michael: converts seismic activity into sound.









Flame speaker; ionized flame through which sound can be amplified via positive and negative electrodes.
flame speaker


Flame Speaker Diagrams




Artists that have used pyrophones in their work.

Nich Bertoni  and Maggie Payne: Flame Speaker








Photoionization of Barium Compounds to produce glowing clouds that change color within electric fields and react to UV rays from the sun by morphing into spherical shapes.

  1. Plasma Physics
  2. Atmospheric Testing and Experimentation
  3. Artificial Plasma Clouds
  4. Barium Photoplasma
  5. Plasma Crystals
    1. Barium Fluorohalide Crystals doped with Eu 2+ Crystals",
      J. of Phys
    2. "It has been estimated from spectroscopic measurements that the degree of ionization may be as high as 75 percent in the released plasma in comparison to being on the order of 1 percent for the previously used Ba-CuO solid system which depends almost entirely on solar photoionization, a time-dependent phenomena which further reduces the usable barium yield of this known system. " : "Description of Preferred Embodiments" link in the NASA Barium Patent

Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics



Vacuum tube

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