Earthquake chimes

[gfish]

I just finished Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer, which was a fun and interesting (if ever so slightly wankery) read. It offhandedly mentioned a really amazing idea: earthquake chimes! This conjured some very impressive mental images of a rack of suspended I-beams, or church-bell-sized ingots in a delicate whiffletree arrangement, just waiting for an earthquake large enough to set them in motion.

Sadly, I don't a set has ever been made. I did find reference to a "seismofon" installation at a museum. They are computer controlled to react to earthquakes anywhere in the world. Neat, but not of any particularly inspiring dimension.

If anyone has an atrium they need filling, I think you should really consider this option.

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I'd be glad to build one but it would be completely pointless where I live. Boyce@downmoo was building a set of windchimes out of oxygen and argon tanks he'd sawed the bottoms off of, in the hopes of getting tones you felt in your teeth: I need to catch up with him and see what's happening with that.
SOME day I mean to build an aeolean harp. I know boxofdelights's husband was working on one at some point. That would make sense around here. Maybe it could be a tornado-harp, to go along with the earthquake-chimes.
It probably wouldn't be difficult at all to make a wave gong, using a float that smacked against a gong-ish object that was itself set on larger floats to track tide rather than waves, but I don't think it'd fare well in a tidal wave.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Hurricane pipe organs!