On a silver platform sits an unremarkable mass-produced looking piece of equipment. What looks like an amplifier or maybe a CD player at first glance is actually a G-Player. It's function is no different from an ordinary record or CD player in that it is used to listen to sounds. Put what is played back on the G-Player is not a record or CD, it is the Earth. It's slogan: "The Earth is a disk. The Earth is a record."

A geographical database made up of data from cities, the undulation of mountain ranges and the orbit of an artificial satellite as it circles the Earth are all calculated to produce the Sound of the Earth. What you really hear though is the noise of an enormous amount of data being loaded. But it sounded so much like what the Earth should sound like that it gave me the chills.

Like tuning a radio, if you turn the knob on the player, you can "tune" in to some 1000 satellites - geographical satellites, military satellites... the player has a number of genres to choose from. The satellite's name, present longitude and latitude, and its distance from the earth are displayed. Looking at the longitude and latitude, you can see that the satellites are continually moving, and as it moves the subtle changes that you hear really does sound like the scratches of the earth. The noise produced by cities and mountain ranges are very loud, while the oceans are silent having no data to produce. In the event space, a map was also hung so that you can have fun locating the satellites you listen to.

The artist, Jens Bland, is active in Cologne, Germany. In his white shirt, slacks and glasses, he looks like your stereotypical salesman. The exhibit space also looks like a showroom with flyers and a flat-panel monitor, even a decorative plant! One reason for the setup is that his own name is Bland, but in all seriousness, the G-Player allows you to hear a sound that can't be heard, the sound of the Earth as if it were an ordinary thing, and the room reflects this making it sound even more like the real thing. I love geography, so this sound is just absolutely amazing.

Enjoy this artwork.