Rebecca Friedman

Silencers are mechanisms that hold excess energy in order to dampen its effects. They capture and contain vibration in a series of detours and interruptions; shocks pass through a maze of barriers, tiring themselves along the way.

Like children moving through a playground, every nook is fully explored. Energy moves without regard to its medium, its sole function is to propagate, to pollinate. Every surface is coated in an ectoplasmic trail of hyperactivity. Mechanical structures absorb this excess, and what is left is a structured hum, a faint buzz recalling interaction.

Big whorls have little whorls

Which feed on their velocity,

And little whorls have lesser whorls

And so on to viscosity. [1]

1 - Richardson, L. F. Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1922).