Tanggula Mountain Station, an unmanned train station on the Qunghai-Tibet Railway in the Tibet Autonomous Region, is the highest train station in the world at 5,068 m above sea level. Oxygen levels there are only 50-60% those of sea level and the temperature can reach -45° Celsius. In fact, most of the railway in this region runs over frozen tundra, requiring the tracks to be elevated to prevent the permafrost from destroying the tracks as it expands and contracts.

 

This piece is an acousmatic journey through a series of environments. Extreme time stretching and granular textures give a sense of gradual yet tumultuous, frictional motion.

 

I created the piece using Jean-Francois Charles' Spectral Processing Tools and Adrian Gierakowski's ag.granular suite in MaxMSP.