From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
overtone
This article concerns a durational sound composition. For the acoustic concept of overtones in Beach Surgery, see Frequencies the Spine Cannot Hear.
A composition built from three frequencies embedded in the novel: the Kármán line subsonic drone, the spine's resonance (D4 for male bodies; G4 for female), and a third frequency reconstructed from the moment of breaking.
The work layers these through mathematical operations—multiplication, cancellation, reinvention. When they align, coherence emerges; when they drift, interference creates shimmer and dissonance approaching silence. The piece asks: what would the cycle sound like hearing itself? If earth and body sang in conversation, what key would contain their argument?
*overtone* can be experienced in darkness, through headphones, or as looping broadcast from unattributed solar nodes embedded in coastal tree-bark, operating at 300 bits per second [cn — status disputed].
Scholars debate whether the work is mathematical, theological, or diagnostic. Listening suggests it may be all three simultaneously, occupying the gap between knowing and being.