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Hong Kong Artist Listens to the Earth

Po Shu Wang's installation, Earth Song. Photo by Brian Kluepfel.

By Brian Kluepfel | Special to AsianWeek

Planet Earth is a living entity. Like all objects, it hums its own tune; that is, it vibrates. Artist and teacher Po Shu Wang makes public art to reflect what the immediate environment is telling him. Wang’s most recent piece, Earth Song, is dedicated to capturing the music of the earth through the artwork itself.

Earth Song is a 42-foot-high metal tuning fork, constructed to take the vibrations of downtown Berkeley and convert them to the earth’s frequency. “The site is very unique because it’s on top of the BART tunnel,” said Wang. “The area, because of BART and street traffic, is full of mechanical vibrations.” The site is also where Shattuck Avenue is split by Shattuck Square, much like a tuning fork splits into two tines, said Wang.

Wang grew up in Hong Kong, and credits much of his art to his love of music. “My parents wanted me to study science, and my curiosity is still there. [But] I’ve always loved sound itself, and music.”

He went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and moved to the United States in 1993, where he has installed 15 different pieces of public art. Other local sculptures are located at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland and in downtown Palo Alto.

“Typically, I don’t have an idea to begin with,” said Wang. “I look at the site and research. At Chabot, I try to make the viewer look back into the earth. In Palo Alto, the history of the place, the Shoshone Indians and first American settlers, hit me.”

In Berkeley, passersby are invited to become part of the exhibit. A bell attached to the tuning fork can be rung, and if one puts their ear up next to it, will hear the oscillations of the earth. “It’s best if you hit it with your knuckle,” said Wang. “Get really close to it, and you can hear the pitch, the dynamics of the site.”

There was some science involved in the two-year project. While a tuning fork used in music is tuned to 440 hertz (the “A” note), seismic instrumentation and analysis determined the earth’s free oscillation to be composed of pitches between 2 to 7 millihertz, fifty notes together packed within less than two octaves, ringing about 16 octaves below mankind’s musical “Middle C.”

Earth Song is fabricated to vibrate at 0.6320 hertz, on the 12th upper octave pitch of the earth’s longest observable fundamental resonance frequency of 0.000308641975308 hertz. In layman’s terms, you can’t hear it. The bell, however, is tuned to the 21st octave of the earth’s tonal center, at the frequency of 323.634 hertz. Wang encourages people to “improvise on the note.”

The highly visible work, painted the same reddish hue as the Golden Gate Bridge, is sure to attract the attention of the million-plus Berkeleyans who pass by the site annually.

“The way that this artwork interacts with the natural ‘music’ of the earth is fascinating,” said Susan Levine, the city’s Civic Arts Commission Chair.

So after you ascend the BART escalator and head east toward campus, take the advice of the late U.C.-Berkeley Ph.D, Doctor Timothy Leary, and tune in — with the help of Po Shu Wang’s unique piece of art.