Wind’s Incoherences

On listening to measure

Abstract

This paper theorizes 'incoherence' as a mode of attuning to wind as an atmospheric process. In the oilfields of the Permian Basin (a geological region of West Texas/New Mexico, USA), I make listening devices from debris collected at refinery and well sites. These instruments figure a relation between the toxicity of oil and gas emissions and the rhythms of everyday life downwind, where exposure often evades regulatory legibility. The sound traces wind’s patterns and evasions, foregrounding the ephemeral and fragmentary textures through which atmospheric relations are sensed and lived.