My latest at Forbes: I was at a hotel in Finland and heard nature sounds coming out of a log. Not a speaker shaped like a log. An actual log, with electronics embedded inside that use the wood itself as the vibrating membrane. The company behind it is called Tuntu, founded by sound artist Kirsi Ihalainen, and it’s only a few weeks old.
Ihalainen has spent years recording nature, including the aurora borealis. Her approach: take the material itself, whether it’s a log, a boulder or an entire wall, and turn it into the speaker. The audio signal transfers into the material, which vibrates to create sound, just like a traditional speaker cone but with a completely different texture and feeling.
It’s a small company with a fascinating concept. “Embodied sound” is her phrase for it, meaning sound you actually feel, not just hear. There’s something genuinely interesting here at the intersection of design, nature and audio that I hadn’t encountered before.