European Institute for Sound Studies (EISS)

Division: Zero maintains a continuous research practice centered on the study, mapping, and interpretive analysis of low-frequency, near-silent, and sub-audible acoustic environments within contained or abandoned infrastructure across Europe. These are not neutral spaces; they are historically sedimented, technically obsolete, and materially charged. Their sonic conditions function as both data and cultural residue (Restgeräusch).

1. Site Selection

Sites are selected based on archival trace, infrastructural memory, or evidence of prior sonic transmission: unused telecom relay chambers, shuttered industrial nodes, silent club basements, disused elevator cores, sealed municipal corridor networks, decommissioned server vaults. Their acoustic state is not “empty”; it is ongoing. These sealed architectures operate as slow memory devices.

2. Data Acquisition

Measurements combine qualitative observation with numeric low-frequency capture (Niederfrequenzaufnahme). Using professional field recorders, contact transducers, and low-noise preamps placed directly into architectural material, we gather extended-duration recordings at minimal amplitude. The goal is not representational fidelity, but the preservation of threshold states — the region where sound is nearly not-sound.

3. Processing Pipeline

Raw recordings are preserved as uncompressed WAV data. In parallel, numeric extractions (peak envelopes, spectral rolloff, infra-energy drift, resonance decay rates) are processed into CSV format for comparative indexing and reproducibility. Each dataset is paired: sonic object + analytic vector.

4. Interpretation

Interpretation proceeds through acoustic analysis, cultural semiotics, and long-form listening protocols (Langsames Hören). Division: Zero treats these recordings not as absence-of-signal but as culturally saturated micro-archives: leftover conditions, suppressed residues, artifacts of infrastructural silence.

5. Publishing / Transparency

All public outputs of Division: Zero appear in paired form: WAV + CSV. This dual release structure enforces methodological accountability and invites multi-disciplinary reading. These materials are published in small iterative sets rather than single synthetic claims. The aim is not totalizing theory — but incremental documentation of the silent European infrastructural unconscious.