This Christchurch Earthquake composition is created by Ryan McGee (www.lifeorange.com) in collaboration with D.V. Rogers and uses a single seismic recording from the closest station from seismic waveform data made public via IRIS Wilbur 
http://www.iris.edu/cgi-bin/wilberII/wilberII_page3.pl?evname=20110221_235142.3.farm&qtrxyrad=Q1_2011///all

The piece begins with a build-up of several reversed recordings of the event time stretched and audified at different speeds and rates.  We then hear the strong impact from the raw audification followed immediately by a chaotic granulated version emphasizing the loudest points in the impact. We hear a tone fade in that is an extremely time-streched and pitch shifted version of the event with all but the most dominant partials filtered out of the sound.  In a way, this is the tone of the event
itself.  Other versions of this tone will eventually overlap at different pitch intervals.

The chaotic granulation gives way to the event played back at several different time-strech factors and synchronous granulations. Timing becomes more and more ordered and apparent until we hear very clear rhythmic granulations and tones leading to a final build-up and ending with a raw audification.

ref: https://is.gd/z3rSeq

Christchurch Earthquake Mw6.3 21st Feb *02011 - Ryan McGee

"Philosophical and psychological research results show that there is a substantial difference between seeing and hearing a data set, because both evolve and accentuate different aspects of a phenomenon. From a philosophical point of view the eye is good for recognizing structure, surface and steadiness, whereas the ear is good for recognizing time, continuum, remembrance and expectation. In studying aspects like tectonic structure, surface deformation and regional seismic risk the visual modes of depiction are hard to surpass. But in questions of timely development, of characterization of a fault's continuum and of tension between past and expected events the acoustic mode of representation seems to be very suitable." - Florian Dombois

http://www.auditory-seismology.org

http://www.icad.org/icad2016/proceedings2/posters/ICAD2016_paper_21.pdf

Christchurch Earthquake Mw6.3 21st Feb *02011 - Ryan McGee

SeismicSounds