Invisible Landmarks: A Sound Map of the Grand Calumet Area of Concern
David Rueter

The Grand Calumet Area of Concern, a region of northwest Indiana defined by the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, is a 13 mile stretch of the Grand Calumet river and the surrounding watershed.  One of the most industrialized areas in the nation, it is also one of the most heavily polluted: only sludge worms, resilient creatures named for their ability to survive in severely polluted water, inhabit the mouth of the river.  Of all the 43 AoCs listed in the Agreement, only the Grand Calumet fails all 14 prescribed tests.

This installation presents a flashlight and a printed aerial photograph of the Area of Concern.  When a portion of the photograph is lit by the flashlight,  a computer observing the photograph looks up the location of the illuminated region in a database, retrieves a collection of nearby sites, and generates a sound based on the number, type, and proximity of the results.  The database contains 500 pollution-related features belonging to 7 different categories, including Superfund National Priority List sites, polluting industrial facilities, leaking underground storage tanks, and slag dumps.  Each type of site has its own associated sound; combined, they form unique aural representations of places illuminated on the map.

Categories of data represented by the sound map:
Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Sites
Major Polluters (NPDES Major)
Leaking Underground Storage Tanks (LUST)
Brownfields
Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) Sites
Slag Dumps
Point Discharge (PD) Locations