Artist Shome Burua presents 'Standing Wave' acoustic installation to address urban heat in Phoenix

Shome Burua, artist, presented Standing Wave, an acoustic-ecology installation he said is part of the Sombra Initiative and one of nine national artist projects addressing extreme urban heat in Phoenix, Arizona.

Burua said the installation has two elements: a sculptural layer “built to resemble sound waves” and a set of small devices he called “eco acoustic primitives.” He described the devices as “very simple circuits, analog circuits that respond to sunlight.”

"This project is all about acoustic ecology. So that means the sounds that make up our environment, and, there's 2 elements to this project," Burua said. He added that the installation is meant to mirror how people respond to sunlight: "this fluctuation in sound and the fluctuation in power that's going into this is very much like how our body reacts to the sun."

Burua said the installation produces intentionally synthetic birdlike sounds. "So it sounds like a bunch of little birds, and these are purposefully synthetic. Purposefully synthetic in that when you hear a real bird versus a synthetic bird, your brain is forced to try and acknowledge the differences between the 2," he said. He framed the work as a prompt to rethink human relationships with the environment: "this gives us an opportunity to really experiment and to think differently about how we can engage it."

Details on installation sites, public access, funding or timelines were not specified in the remarks.