2014 12:30 PMListen to Strange Sounds Recorded in a Hole 5 Miles DeepLotte Geeven traveled to a super-deep hole to record what Earth sounds like from 30,000 feet below.1 / 5ChevronChevronlotte-seismographThe seismograph recording the rumblings of Earth Image: Lotte GeevenSave this storySaveSave this storySaveFor more than 20 years the world’s deepest hole could be found on Russia’s Kola peninsula boring 40,000 feet down into the Earth’s crust that’s its actual name) has been dwarfed by both a 40,318-foot oil rig in Qatar and a 40,502-foot well off the Russian island of Sakhalin and you get the sense that the race for deepest hole in the world is not over yet Google any of these super deep boreholes and you’ll see pictures of gaping circular voids leading thousands of feet down to a pit of mysteries A hole’s endless nature is just the sort of thing that make a person ponder existential questions like: What does life actually mean And can you really get to China by digging It also brings to mind more practical inquires such as: How far down could I go before I’m totally incinerated For Lotte Geeven she’s always wondered about one thing: “I’ve always been curious about what kind of sound the Earth would make,” she says the Netherlands-based artist actually found out Geeven partnered with geologists and engineers to record the sound of a 30,000-foot hole located in the sloping hills of Windischeschenbach and turned it into a fascinating art installation the hole reaches a scorching 500 degrees Fahrenheit Geeven’s fascination with holes goes way back and I spent a childhood building underground tunnels huts and trying to dig a hole to China with my friends until we reached the underground water and couldn’t go further,” she recalls “The mystery of what is below our feet has always stuck to me so I decided that now She began researching super deep holes and stumbled across the famous Kola borehole It turned out that the Kola hole closed down in 2005 and had been partially filled with concrete so she continued her search until she found the perfect hole in Germany She contacted the German Research Center for Geosciences and inquired about their hole "My question to them was of an existential and poetic nature: 'What does the earth sound like?' I do believe they were a bit skeptical at first about my presence.” she says “The first answer I got from one of the logging specialists of GFZ was straightforward and slightly disappointing: 'Lotte it’s going to be totally silent down there.'" a temperature at which normal electronics melt like an ice cream cone in the summer "My first naïve thought of lowering a normal microphone inside was waived," she says Instead they used recordings from a geophone and an ultrasonic sensor that measures soundwaves outside the range of human hearing That data was then translated into audio by specialized software The first time Geeven listened to the sound with proper headphones she recalls feeling overwhelmed by what she heard "All the hair on my arm stood up straight and if I hear it now again after many times it still has the same effect on me," she says or the oncoming roar of a tornado ripping through the sky "I later learned that blind people can 'hear' thunderstorms because the low frequency can be sensed in the body," she adds "Perhaps this is what is going on." Geeven uses audio foam as a visual representation of the recorded sounds It’s not clear exactly what you hear on Geeven’s recording She guesses it could be something small like a data transmission that is resonating it seems possible that some of the sounds were created by the devices themselves "Exactly knowing what it is is not important I believe," she says They act as engines for new thoughts and ideas." Geeven translated her sounds into a visual installation that echoes a field lab setup It’s visually modest with just a Russian seismograph registers the sound while connected to low frequency speakers a photograph of the team at the hole and a curved audio foam under glass But her ambitions for the project are far greater than that she’d like to dig a super deep hole in a public space of some as-of-yet undecided metropolis to act as an acoustic instrument for the sounds beneath our feet "The costs for this are estimated between one and five million euros by engineers I approached," she says "I am still looking for a partner that can help to realize this." It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking