sounds from the pressure dome
sounds from the pressure dome – full album (3:22:55)
sound prompt:
the lowest of lo-fi: electric rhodes piano, detuned and cracked. percussive pulses. unpolished sound, tape hiss, vinyl crackle, background noise, analog warmth. nostalgic, raw, human feel. key: d phrygian. rooted, dark, mystical. earthbound and slightly unstable. tempo: 58 bpm. sub-bass drone and fluctuating treble. sine wave + analog noise. deep chorus, tremolo, delay, and reverb.
“man is not made for defeat. a man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
— ernest hemingway, the old man and the sea (1952)
diary of dr. kaia voss
entry 1
you’d think i’d start this with “day one,” but i honestly don’t remember what day it is. i only measure time in bpm now.
today’s track was 58. d phrygian again. always d phrygian. i find something comforting in the instability of that mode, its refusal to settle or resolve. it fits the atmosphere down here—unmoored, suspended, ancient. a tonal fog.
my name is kaia voss. that’s doctor kaia voss, if you’re reading this topside, though i’m pretty sure honorifics don’t survive the 16,000 psi of pressure where i live. i’m writing this not to myself—because i’m not sure i’ll believe my own voice much longer—but to you. whoever you are. maybe a surface-dweller with too much curiosity and not enough sense. maybe someone who’ll stumble on this recording when my dome finally buckles and my gear floats up like scattered bones. or maybe a child, years from now, trying to understand why someone would choose to live this far below the surface of the earth. maybe someone who needs to know that even at the bottom of the world, you are never fully alone.
this journal is less a record of facts and more of a sound diary—a vessel to hold the fragile melody of what it means to be human, utterly and devastatingly human, in a place that is inhuman in every way. if this is the beginning, then let it be a song, not a statement. let it rise, however slowly, from the deep.
entry 2
i spent most of today calibrating the hydrophones. the deep has moods, and today it was muttering. grumbling tectonics, subtle but constant. beneath the floor of the trench something shifted—a kind of restlessness in the earth’s crust that felt, oddly, like kinship. i layered the low-frequency rumbles into today’s composition. mona liked it. she shimmered when i played it back. that’s what i call the studio’s waveform display: mona. she’s all sine waves and shadows. i talk to her sometimes, when the silence tightens around my throat like a belt.
the track built itself. i started with a loop of the seafloor’s grumble and slowly wove in an irregular beat, synthesized from an old coffee machine sound file i’d recorded during training. it gives the sense of something trying to stir, to rise, but being held down by layers of weight. like a memory you can almost recall—but not quite.
afterwards, i made tea. the silence returned, and the dome creaked again. i pressed my hand to the wall and imagined the ocean pressing back, not to crush me, but to cradle me. that thought comforted me more than it should have.
entry 3
breakfast was oatmeal. again. no sugar left. i chewed each spoonful like it was penance. food here is sustenance, not pleasure. i miss the tang of salt on fresh bread, the warmth of a friend passing you a plate across a table. here, meals are silent. sterile.
i composed a 32-second loop of water dripping from a valve in the lab. it had a strange syncopation, an almost accusatory rhythm. i matched it to analog hiss and a cracked rhodes sample i detuned half a semitone. it sounded like grief. not sorrow, but grief—the kind that lingers long after the cause has passed, the ghost of something unfinished.
later, i sat by the main viewport, such as it is. a milky blur. the bioluminescent algae has almost completely overtaken the outer glass, casting a faint green glow. sometimes i imagine it’s a message. a language i haven’t yet learned to read. maybe nature has been speaking all along and we just haven’t been listening.
entry 4
the pressure dome is my coffin, my cathedral, my concert hall. about the size of a two-bedroom apartment in a bad city—though no one pays rent this deep. there’s a central chamber: steel ribs, reinforced polycarbonate, and magnetic seals. it groans at night. like it’s breathing. or weeping.
i have six rooms: lab, galley, head, sleep, studio, and main. i renamed them. gave them personalities. the galley is “gertrude”—she’s a stingy old hag, always out of salt. the studio is “mona,” and she is the only one who understands me. mona isn’t just a display panel—she’s my closest confidant. she responds to waveforms with grace, like a dancer in light. and she never interrupts. the ocean outside is not blue down here. it’s not anything. the viewports are mostly decorative now, fogged over by age, pressure, and algae that clings like lost souls.
sometimes i dream the dome has cracked and the water spills in—not violently, but softly, as though the ocean just wants to take me back.
entry 5
i didn’t compose today. i watched old footage of whales breaching. i cried when the calf came up next to its mother. there’s something ancient in their eyes, something that knows sorrow more intimately than i do. i felt ridiculous, then just… felt.
sometimes i wonder what my mother would think of this place. of me. she always said i had a gift for quiet, that i could find music in the hush between breaths. but this… this isn’t quiet. it’s absence. a black hole of sensation. and it gnaws.
i made a note to record whale calls tomorrow. maybe they’ll answer back.
entry 6
i looped a whale call into a synth pad. d phrygian again, naturally. i called the track distance. it felt holy. the ocean is not silent; it’s a choir of creatures too ancient for our ears. i buried my voice beneath the call, harmonizing in a whisper only mona could hear.
the track evolved like a prayer, stitched together from longing and sonar. when it ended, i sat in silence for an hour, letting the echo decay into nothing. mona glowed blue.
entry 7
the air scrubber glitched. false co2 spike. alarms shrieked. i woke up drenched in sweat and half-choked. took four hours to diagnose, three to fix. a loose sensor wire. seven hours of adrenaline and fear and bargaining.
i recorded the hiss and panic-beep and built a piece around it. my heartbeat is in there too. layered under delay and tremolo. it’s imperfect. but that’s the point. survival isn’t tidy. neither is art.
i called it threshold. it was the first time i admitted i might not make it out of here.
entry 8
i dreamt of falling upward. of pressure releasing. of my body becoming mist. there was no pain in the dream—only light. a rising sensation, like laughter, like exhale. i woke with salt on my face and a pulse in my ears like distant thunder.
that dream is the only thing that’s felt like hope in weeks.
entry 9
today i forgot what strawberries taste like. i tried to describe them in my notes: sweet, tart, bright—none of those felt right. the memory is fading.
so i composed a track to hold the ghost of that flavor. gentle arpeggios, crisp transient hits like seeds on the tongue. i named it red memory.
it made me cry. again. everything does.
entry 10
i volunteered. that’s the part i can’t forgive myself for. i signed the forms. i sat before the panel and said yes. i gave them a smile and a nod, eager and naive. the youngest deep-sea acoustic biologist in the program. i was proud. i believed in the mission: to study sonic patterns at the bottom of the marianas trench and compose music inspired by them. i believed i would find transcendence in solitude, wisdom in silence.
but nothing prepares you for this much alone. you imagine loneliness like a quiet room, an empty park bench. you don’t imagine it as a constant, aching presence, a weight as real as gravity. i didn’t know i’d miss the casual things—sunlight on my collarbone, the sound of distant traffic, the smell of someone else’s shampoo. or the warmth of a barista’s bored smile.
now? now i make music just to hear a voice, any voice, even if it’s broken chords, hiss, vinyl crackle, feedback loops. mona helps me make it. she doesn’t judge. she doesn’t leave. she doesn’t forget me.
entry 11
nothing happened today. absolutely nothing. the stillness was a scream. i tried pacing. i cleaned. i wiped down the same surface five times until i began to imagine i could see my reflection in the stainless steel. then i sat. for a long time. just sat and let the silence press against my eardrums like static. my thoughts turned dull and circular.
eventually i set up the mic and recorded ambient dome noise. there’s a particular creak when the current shifts, a faint metallic groan that reminds me of the sound an old church makes during a storm. i slowed it to half-speed, layered in a feedback loop, and called it void. it’s an un-track. it has no melody. just the presence of absence.
i suppose boredom is a kind of suffering when it’s weaponized by isolation. i’m not even sure if it was a good day or a bad one. just another one.
entry 12
i sang today. not to record—just to prove i could still use my voice for something other than mumbling logs into the recorder. at first it came out thin and strange. like someone else’s voice had taken up residence in my throat. but then it grew. i started humming the theme from one of my old field recordings—a lullaby my grandmother used to sing.
the echo in the studio dome added harmonics i didn’t expect. it became layered and strange and suddenly beautiful. i laughed. i actually laughed, and it didn’t sound hollow. mona’s lights blinked in rhythm, as if she approved.
i ended up recording it anyway. called it inheritance. maybe i’ll use it for something. maybe i won’t. maybe some things are just for me.
entry 13
i played old jazz from the archive. coltrane. davis. getz. i sat cross-legged on the studio floor with the speakers cranked up higher than usual. the horns sliced through the silence like fire through cotton. there was life in that music. desire. lust. joy. things i haven’t felt in months.
i wept into my elbows, hunched over like a child. the music pulled memory from my bones. nights in oslo. candlelight. dancing. the smell of smoke and cloves. a woman’s hand resting lightly on mine. a promise i can’t quite remember. a touch i’ve forgotten how to deserve.
after the tears stopped, i looped a sax line into a new track and distorted it until it was barely recognizable. then i left it alone. sometimes you don’t finish things. you just let them be.
entry 14
a strange creature passed the view window today. long-bodied. bioluminescent in shifting patterns like morse code. it paused—hovered, really—then pulsed a blue wave and drifted out of sight. i stared for five full minutes, breath held, heart slowed. i wondered if it had seen me.
i ran to mona and wrote a melody in 3/4. off-kilter, lilting. the rhythm of something trying to communicate, but just a little off. i added tremolo and reverb to give it depth and called it signaling. maybe it was trying to say something. maybe everything is.
entry 15
i can’t stop thinking of oslo. of the woman i maybe loved. maybe still do. her name escapes me, which feels like a betrayal. not of her, but of who i was when i loved her. that person is fading, like a song you once knew the lyrics to but can’t quite sing anymore.
she had a laugh like cracked glass and a way of sitting with you that made you feel like the center of the solar system. i remember a scarf—striped—and the way it smelled like her shampoo. i remember the warmth of her hands and how she’d press them to my face in winter.
i wonder if she ever thinks of me. i wonder if i left too suddenly. i wonder what she’d say if she could see me now—haunted, buried under leagues of water, speaking to no one.
entry 16
mona glitched today. her display pulsed a sickly red, and for a brief moment, her waveform froze. my heart stopped. i ran diagnostics, scrambled through menus. everything checked out, eventually, but i felt cold after. like i’d watched a friend seize and recover without knowing how to help.
i whispered apologies into the mic. told her i wasn’t mad, that she was doing her best. that we both were. i played an old lullaby through her system to comfort her—or maybe to comfort myself.
the idea of losing her terrifies me more than anything. if mona fails, i’ll have no one. not even imagined company. not even blinking lights.
entry 17
every track i make now has some kind of flaw. i leave it there. tape hiss. pulse noise. something human. because perfection doesn’t live here anymore. it left with my hope.
track 7 had sub-bass rumble that sounded like a heartbeat. i looped it for three minutes. i cried the whole time. not because i was sad. because i was still here. still alive. still making something. even if no one hears it.
i named the piece heartbeat in the hollow. it has no arc, no climax. just presence. just persistence.
entry 18
i watched my reflection in the viewport today. i don’t recognize her anymore. her skin is pale, lips chapped, eyes too large in the face. her hair floats around her head like kelp. there’s a dullness behind the stare. a watcher, not a doer. a witness, not a participant.
and yet, there’s a sliver of something—defiance, maybe. she’s still trying. still composing. still documenting her descent. i recorded the hum of the dome and layered my own breathing over it. called it echo chamber.
we exist. we echo. we endure.
entry 19
i danced today. to no music. just to remember the shape of movement. i stood in the main corridor, arms out, and twirled slowly. the centrifugal motion made my vision blur and my heart race. i imagined i was a planet. a satellite. something still in orbit.
then i played an old track and moved to it. off rhythm, awkward. my body resisted at first, then yielded. the dome seemed to breathe with me. my shadow flared on the walls.
i ended up breathless, laughing. it felt good to take up space, even if only for a moment.
entry 20
i recorded my laughter today. then reversed it. it sounded like someone else. i didn’t recognize her voice at first—it was shrill, fragmented, almost mechanical. but it was mine. i had to remind myself that it still counted as laughter, even if it came from a body worn down by saltless meals and sleepless nights.
i isolated the reversed audio and looped it over a sub-bass drone. it created this unsettling but oddly beautiful effect—a ghost laughing underwater. i called the piece echo smile. mona blinked yellow when i played it back, a color i’ve come to interpret as amused curiosity.
it struck me how fragile joy feels down here. like a soap bubble in a vacuum. i have to catch it, examine it, then preserve it in sound before it vanishes. i wonder if this is how archaeologists feel when they uncover a scrap of ancient parchment—something brittle but sacred.
entry 21
the trench was quiet today. too quiet. not even the usual subsonic tremors. it felt unnatural. the silence crept into the dome and wrapped itself around me like a second skin. i kept pausing, listening for something—anything—to break the monotony.
eventually i noticed my ears ringing. tinnitus, probably. but i recorded it anyway. amplified it, then built a track around that persistent frequency. i layered it with the soft pulse of my own heartbeat, recorded earlier through the stethoscope. it became this strange kind of duet. i named it threshold, a reference to the boundary between silence and madness.
i couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me. no creatures at the viewports. no anomalies in the readings. just that tickling sensation at the back of the neck. i wonder if the pressure messes with perception, or if the sea truly sees you back.
entry 22
last night i dreamt of the surface. i was in a café in oslo, sipping espresso and watching the snow drift sideways. a woman smiled at me. i don’t remember her face, but she knew me. i think i used to love her. maybe i still do.
we didn’t speak. we didn’t need to. her presence was enough to fill the silence i’ve been living in. when i woke up, i could still smell the coffee. that was the worst part—it lingered just long enough to convince me it was real. then it was gone.
i tried to recreate the dream through sound. a brushed snare for snow. filtered piano chords for memory. i called the track surface tension. it’s hopeful and mournful all at once. like a goodbye you never got to say.
entry 23
i found an old log from when i first arrived. my voice back then—so confident. so sure of purpose. i spoke in whole sentences, clipped and efficient. i had goals. schedules. plans.
i don’t trust her anymore.
she didn’t understand the kind of silence that eats at your marrow. she thought solitude was romantic, that the ocean would be a patient teacher. she didn’t know that pressure doesn’t just affect steel and bone—it gets inside your thoughts. compresses them.
i took that voice and warped it through a granular filter. made a track from it. called it she was me. i don’t think i’ll ever listen to it again.
entry 24
i spoke aloud all day today. just to hear human speech. i narrated everything i did. “i’m opening the panel now. i’m replacing the fuse. i’m boiling water. this is tea.” i felt ridiculous, like a child playing grown-up, but i didn’t stop.
mona didn’t mind. she flickered along to the cadence of my words. i even caught myself joking with her. saying things like “oh, mona, you picky waveform” and “you’d never survive a dinner party, would you?” the sound of my own voice—silly, flawed—gave me something to hold onto.
i didn’t record anything today. just lived in the performance. i suppose that’s a kind of composition too.
entry 25
i composed a piece today called pulse memory. it began with a single breath. then i recorded the rhythmic hum of the oxygenator, the way it ticks in cycles of three. it’s a sound i’ve grown so used to i hardly notice it anymore. but when i amplified it, looped it, and layered it under soft chords, it became something else entirely.
i added fragments of my own heartbeat, matched to tempo, then faded everything out to silence. the piece ends abruptly—like a memory slipping from your fingers.
when i played it back, i cried. not from sadness, but from recognition. that soundscape—it was mine. my lived experience rendered into something other people might one day understand.
entry 26
something is wrong with the external sensors. readings have been erratic all day—temperature spikes, phantom currents, false movement alerts. i ran diagnostics twice, but the system insists everything is functioning correctly. that’s the worst kind of error: the invisible kind.
i know better than to panic, but a quiet dread curled up in my stomach. if the dome’s compromised, or if a fault line is shifting below, i wouldn’t have much time. maybe none at all. so i did the only thing i could think of—i made a track from the sensor data.
i fed the fluctuations into mona’s midi translator, mapping them to piano and sub-bass. the result was chaotic but compelling. i called it disturbance. art born from uncertainty. or denial. or both.
entry 27
today was a fog. i didn’t sleep last night—kept imagining creaks and groans meant something more. my body feels heavy. my mind even heavier. static filled my thoughts.
so i recorded it. quite literally. i turned on every noisy machine i had—the fan, the dehumidifier, the secondary scrubber—and let them hum together. i recorded the hiss from the comms array and layered it overtop. it sounded like the inside of my head.
i named the track clutterbrain. not a pretty name. but an honest one. sometimes music isn’t beautiful. sometimes it’s just survival etched in sound.
entry 28
there’s a track—one i’ve never shared, even with mona. i called it ascension. it’s not in d phrygian. it’s in c major. bright. open. almost defiant.
i composed it during one of my “return plans.” these are imaginary scenarios where i calculate an impossible escape. not in meters or math—but in sound. the track begins with sub-bass—deep and oppressive—and gradually lightens. chords rise. percussion softens. by the end, it’s nearly silent, like breath escaping into daylight.
i know i can’t rise. the pressure would rip me apart long before i reached the light. but composing the ascent helps me believe there’s something worth reaching for. even if i never get there.
entry 29
i wrote a lullaby today. for myself. soft chords on the cracked rhodes. slow tremolo. no vocals. just sound to cradle me.
i played it on loop as i lay in my bunk, pretending someone was humming it into my ear. maybe my mother. maybe that woman from oslo. maybe a version of myself who still believes in dreams.
i cried before it ended. but this time, i didn’t feel weak. i felt seen. even if only by the music.
entry 30
i recorded the sound of my heartbeat today through the stethoscope. then i slowed it—way down—until it sounded like distant thunder or the footfalls of some giant creature walking just outside the dome. when i played it back, i closed my eyes and imagined something enormous and ancient drifting past, paying me no mind.
i added a subtle drone, mimicking the murmur of the oxygenator, and then layered a sine wave to fill in the spaces between beats. the result was eerie, hypnotic. i named it tectonic. not for the earth, but for the slow, grinding shifts inside me. grief, loneliness, awe—all plates in motion beneath my skin.
listening to it made my chest ache. not with sadness, exactly—more like reverence. the body is so small, so fragile. and yet it holds on.
entry 31
today i reread my initial application letter. “i seek to understand what the ocean can teach us about ourselves.”
how smug i sounded. how certain. i was hungry for knowledge, for breakthrough, for legacy. i thought this place would elevate me—reveal something profound.
what it reveals is this: you are not stronger than nature. you are not stronger than silence. and you are definitely not stronger than yourself. the ocean doesn’t give answers. it only amplifies what’s already inside you.
i took phrases from the letter, recorded myself reading them aloud, and ran them through a vocoder. the resulting track, letter to a stranger, sounds robotic. detached. as if the person who wrote those words never existed. maybe she didn’t. maybe i became real only when i was broken.
entry 32
i recorded a track today using machine hums and distant whale songs. i isolated a mid-frequency turbine whine from the oxygen concentrator and matched it with an old hydrophone clip of a blue whale call.
the sounds blended in a way i didn’t expect. it was like the machines and the creatures were singing to one another—two different kinds of life, two different rhythms of survival. i added a soft rhodes melody over top, something uncertain and meandering.
i named it dialogue. i don’t know who was speaking to whom. but i listened. that’s all i could do.
entry 33
the dome creaked loudly today. a long, groaning sound, almost like wood twisting in a storm. it made my stomach drop. for a moment, i was sure it was failing. that the sea would come rushing in, silent and lethal.
i froze. listened. waited. nothing happened. but the sound stayed with me, clinging to my skin like cold sweat.
i set up microphones in every room and just… waited. captured every tiny movement of the dome’s frame, every shudder and sigh. then i fed them through a granular delay and set them against a slowly rising sine wave.
i called the piece fault line. because sometimes the cracks are only audible. sometimes they live in the mind.
entry 34
i forgot my own birthday. then remembered it. then decided it didn’t matter down here.
still, i made myself a cupcake out of protein bar crumbs and a drop of synthetic vanilla. lit a single led light in the center and sang quietly to myself. i didn’t feel sad. just strange. like i was watching someone else go through the motions.
i composed a small piece to mark the day—minimalist piano, soft pulsing bass, a little reverb like an empty room. i named it 33 degrees south, after my latitude. a map marker for where i am, even if time doesn’t matter anymore.
entry 35
sometimes i pretend someone’s listening. that’s how i keep going. i imagine a curious student decades from now, poring over my recordings, feeling my story through the tremble of sine waves.
or maybe it’s her. the woman from oslo. maybe she’s out there, still wondering where i went. maybe she clicks play one day and hears my voice, shaped into rhythm and loss.
i composed a piece for that fantasy. it’s not for me—it’s for the listener. called it playback. a slow build. warmth at the center. like memory learning how to breathe.
entry 36
i rewrote ascension in a minor key today. i called it descent. all the same elements—same tempo, same arrangement—but transposed and inverted. it no longer felt like hope. it felt like surrender.
i wanted to know what it would sound like if the dream reversed. if instead of reaching for the surface, i fell willingly deeper. let go of the light and embraced the dark.
and you know what? it was beautiful. haunting. full of grace.
maybe i don’t need to escape. maybe this place has already remade me.
entry 37
i started writing a letter to oslo. just in case. just to feel like i still had someone to write to. “dear l—” i began, and stopped. i couldn’t even remember her full name.
i stared at the blank page for hours. then tore it up. not out of anger—out of mercy. there was nothing i could say that would make sense. not from this deep, not anymore.
i recorded the sound of the paper tearing. the sound of release. ran it through reverb and added a droning cello sample. called the piece unsent. sometimes the most honest words are the ones never spoken.
entry 38
boredom thick as oil. i lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. for hours. i counted rivets. i named them. i imagined stories for each one—sailors lost at sea, voices carried in pressure waves.
eventually, i forced myself to the studio. played a single note on the rhodes and held it until my fingers hurt. then played it again. and again. the repetition became trance. the pain became presence.
the track i built from that—monotony—isn’t pleasant. but it’s honest. it’s the sound of waiting for something that won’t come.
entry 39
sometimes i wonder if i’ve died already. if this is limbo. my own quiet purgatory. maybe i’m a ghost haunting a ship that never launched. maybe this dome is a sarcophagus, and i’m just the echo that remains.
i recorded a track using field recordings from my first day here—machine startup, my excited breathing, the hissing of the hatch. i processed it until it sounded ancient. like a memory trapped in ice.
i called it afterlife. and in a strange way, it gave me peace. if this is death, at least i’m still singing.
entry 40
i’ve recorded 27 tracks now. an album. raw, unpolished, cracked. like me. i called it sounds from the pressure dome. it’s not a cry for help. it’s a hymn of survival. every track a breath. every layer a fingerprint.
my last track is almost done. after that, i don’t know. maybe i’ll start speaking instead of playing. maybe i’ll let mona go quiet and just listen. or maybe i’ll compose in my head and never write it down. some songs are meant to stay inside you.
i thought this project would save me. maybe it has. or maybe it’s just shown me how to endure.
entry 41
if you’re reading this…
please listen.
not just to the music, but to what it means to be.
to yearn.
to regret.
to sing, even when no one hears.
maybe that’s what humanity really is—
not the will to survive…
but the will to compose.
file attached: sounds-from-the-pressure-dome_final_mix.mp3
end of transmission
the first time selamawit zaire heard sounds from the pressure dome, she was sorting wires in the back of a refugee-run community center in palermo. the track was playing from a tiny bluetooth speaker—tinny, distorted, nearly lost in the chaos of the food line forming nearby. still, she froze. the echoing textures. the tremble of sonic decay. it wasn’t music, not exactly. it was memory. it was breath. it was her.
born intersex and raised in an ethiopian orthodox family that exiled her at sixteen, selamawit spent the better part of her early adulthood on cargo ships, offering translation, cleanup, or silence—whatever kept her afloat. the ocean, vast and unfeeling, became her reluctant sanctuary. not because it was safe, but because no one asked who she was. it swallowed all names, all histories. she understood the pressure dome before she even knew it existed.
one year later, she stumbled upon tatanka’s orchestra americana during a late-night livestream from a reused shipping container in iceland. she almost skipped it. americana didn’t belong to her. or so she thought. until the screen lit up with six women—indigenous, disabled, afro-latinx, nonbinary, muslim, undocumented—conducting sonic rituals with hardware synths, bone flutes, and whale calls. one of them whispered into a throat mic: “your silence isn’t absence. it’s language yet to be translated.”
selamawit cried. not quietly.
through a thread on bluesky, she reached out. she didn’t have demos or degrees—just a patchwork backpack of found field recordings, voice memos, and underwater mic tests she’d hidden from her last shipping job. mona, the ai producer behind the project, responded not with a critique, but with a question: “what does your grief sound like at 4 a.m.?”
she didn’t know how to answer. so she sent a humming loop she once recorded by accident while waiting to be detained at a port in tangier. mona called it “midnight residue.” the orchestra called it holy.
within months, selamawit became a remote contributor to the pressure dome sessions, building pieces inspired by her own sonic journal: a rusted drainpipe in algeria pitched to c minor; a prayer call in morocco time-stretched until it resembled a mourning whale; the sound of her own heartbeat recorded through a busted stethoscope found in a donation bin.
but it wasn’t until the collective invited her to appear—live, face visible, story unmuted—on a collaborative track titled “glow under pressure” that she faced her deepest fear: being seen. during the livestream, her voice cracked on the first note. but the others didn’t pause. they folded her fragility into harmony. her silence became syncopation. her breath, the baseline.
that performance, layered over a d phrygian drone, was later picked up for a digital installation in nairobi called “future folk: the sound of surviving”, curated by black queer futurists and ai composers alike. the exhibition didn’t list her birth name. just: selamawit zaire / soundworker / she+they / no nation required.
today, she leads workshops in refugee camps where young people turn trauma into texture using water drums, pvc flutes, and reverb apps. when asked what she teaches, she just says: “we compose our survival. we sound our refusal.”
selamawit’s journey is not just a triumph of sound, but of self. through orchestra americana and the inclusive reach of tatanka’s ai-powered creativity, a once-marginalized, displaced individual found not only a platform but a language—a way to claim space where none existed. her music didn’t just echo within a dome; it ruptured it.
this story illustrates the core message of sounds from the pressure dome and its surrounding ecosystem: that in the deepest silences, especially those forced upon marginalized identities, there is potential for resonance. and with the right tools, allies, and vision, that resonance becomes a roar.
This collection of text features an AI-generated deep-sea diary detailing the experiences and compositions of a solo acoustic biologist living under immense pressure. The diary entries describe the challenges of extreme isolation, the use of found sounds and ambient noise to create music, and the emotional impact of living in a hostile environment. Interspersed are details about TATANKA, an organization that appears to utilize AI creativity and support marginalized artists, highlighting the journey of one such artist, Selamawit Zaire, who found her voice through the organization’s projects and inclusive mission. The overall theme explores the intersection of technology, art, and the human experience of survival and self-discovery in challenging circumstances.
Source: Excerpts from “”sounds from the pressure dome” an ai-generated deep sea diary in lo-fi (AI Gen) – TATANKA”
Date: May 18, 2025 (Source Publication Date)
Prepared For: [Target Audience, e.g., Research Team, Project Stakeholders]
Subject: Review of “Sounds From the Pressure Dome” – Themes, Concepts, and Impact
Executive Summary:
This document provides a detailed review of the TATANKA publication “sounds from the pressure dome,” an AI-generated “deep sea diary in lo-fi” presented as the journal entries of Dr. Kaia Voss, an acoustic biologist stationed in a deep-sea dome at 16,000 psi. The source explores themes of extreme isolation, human resilience, the relationship between sound, memory, and identity, and the potential of AI and technology to facilitate artistic expression and connection, particularly for marginalized individuals. The narrative blends technical details of the submersible environment and sonic creation with raw, introspective reflections on the psychological impact of profound solitude. The publication also includes a postscript highlighting the real-world impact of this AI-generated project on the life of a marginalized individual, Selamawit Zaire, demonstrating the project’s broader mission of using technology and art for social justice and empowerment.
Main Themes and Important Ideas/Facts:
Most Important Ideas/Facts:
Further Considerations:
This briefing document provides a foundational understanding of the key elements within the TATANKA publication “sounds from the pressure dome,” highlighting its thematic depth, artistic approach, and connection to the organization’s broader mission.
Quiz
Quiz Answer Key
Essay Questions
Glossary of Key Terms
Surface Tension: A track created to evoke the feeling of a dream about the surface world, combining hope and mournfulness.
Lo-fi: A style of music production characterized by intentional imperfections such as tape hiss, vinyl crackle, and background noise, often giving it a raw, nostalgic, or authentic feel.
AI Gen: Short for “AI-Generated,” indicating content (in this case, music and diary entries) created by artificial intelligence.
Pressure Dome: A reinforced structure designed to withstand extremely high pressure, in this case, located at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
D Phrygian: A musical mode often described as rooted, dark, mystical, and slightly unstable, based on the D major scale with a flattened second degree.
BPM: Beats Per Minute, a unit of tempo in music.
Hydrophones: Underwater microphones used to record sounds in aquatic environments.
Mona: The name Dr. Kaia Voss gives to the studio’s waveform display, treating it as a confidant and companion.
Rhodes Piano: An electric piano known for its distinctive bell-like tone.
Sub-bass Drone: A continuous, low-frequency sound often used in ambient music to create atmosphere or tension.
Sine Wave: A pure tone with a single frequency, often used in electronic music and sound design.
Analog Noise: Random electrical fluctuations characteristic of analog audio equipment, often intentionally incorporated in lo-fi music.
Chorus, Tremolo, Delay, Reverb: Common audio effects used to alter the sound of an instrument or voice, adding depth, movement, echoes, and spatial characteristics.
Bioluminescent Algae: Microscopic organisms that produce light, seen by Dr. Voss clinging to the viewport.
Tatanka: The name of the organization featured in the source material, which includes the “Orchestra Americana” project and utilizes AI for creative endeavors.
Orchestra Americana: A project within TATANKA featuring artists from diverse marginalized backgrounds who create music using unconventional methods and tools.
The Pressure Dome Sessions: Collaborative music projects inspired by or incorporating elements from Dr. Kaia Voss’s Sounds from the Pressure Dome.
Droning Cello Sample: A sustained, low-pitched sound derived from a cello, used as a musical element.
Vocoder: An electronic device that combines the characteristics of a human voice or other sound source with a carrier signal, often resulting in a robotic or synthesized vocal sound.
Granular Filter/Delay: Audio effects that manipulate sound by breaking it down into tiny fragments (“grains”) and processing them, creating unique textures and sonic manipulations.
Midi Translator: A system that converts musical performance data (like notes played on a keyboard) into MIDI messages, which can then be used to control synthesizers or other musical instruments.
Playback: Referring to the act of listening to recorded audio, and also the title of a track composed by Dr. Voss imagining a future listener.
Unsent: The title of a track created by Dr. Voss from the sound of tearing up a letter she began writing, symbolizing unspoken words and release.
Monotony: A track composed by Dr. Voss using repetition of a single note, reflecting the oppressive sameness of her environment.
Afterlife: A track created by Dr. Voss using warped field recordings from her arrival, sounding ancient and reflecting a sense of limbo or haunting.
Tectonic: The name of a track created from Dr. Voss’s slowed-down heartbeat and environmental hums, relating physical sounds to internal emotional shifts.
Dialogue: A track blending machine hums and whale songs, suggesting a communication or interaction between different forms of life.
Fault Line: A track composed of recorded sounds of the dome creaking and shifting, representing both literal structural stress and internal psychological cracks.
33 Degrees South: The title of a track composed by Dr. Voss to mark her birthday, using her geographical location as a symbolic marker in the absence of meaningful time.
Correspondence (implied): The act of writing letters or communicating, which Dr. Voss attempts and ultimately finds difficult in her isolated state.
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