In the site-specific 64-channel installation Lost Sound (2023), artist Henk Schut combines audible environmental sound with infrasonic vibrations to animate local geomaterials – such as rubble, soil, and plantlife – placed within the speakers. The tuning and spatialisation of the resulting sonic environments are informed by measurements and topologies of the local soil based on open-source data sets, combined with daily atmospheric information fetched from the nearest Air Quality Index measuring point. Tuning the visitor in with the Earth’s frequency beneath them. The solidified dry ground found in some speakers, erratically shaken by sound, breathing new life into the matter in a context of decay, invites the audience to reflect on the current and future of their surroundings and position.

Henk Schut is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose ideas arise from asking questions and looking at environments, communities, historical events, and current affairs. Within his work, he is interested in the relationship between space, sound, and time, and in questioning how sound influences the perception of a location and thus one’s vision of their environment. In an ever-changing combination, Schut works together with craftsmen, specialised technicians, architects, art historians, and graphic and software designers to realise works of art and his presentations. Through his interactive approach to the environment in which the work is presented, the architectural space and its sound therefore often play an important role.