Paper short abstract:

This paper takes up frequency across energetic forms of weather and sound, writing through frequency as it comes in and out of mattering, receding into imperceptibility and surfacing into detectibility.

Paper long abstract:

There is a rare and stunning cloud formation that looks like ocean waves in the sky – ocean waves if they were drawn in a highly stylized manner, one wave following another in a regular, arcing formation. Referred to as a Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability (or cloud or wave), it occurs when the upper layer of wind moves faster than the lower layer, drawing moisture upward into a visually stunning display. The nineteenth century physicists after which it is named investigated the pulsing dynamics of energy and physicality of atmospheric forms, addressing topics that spanning meteorology, thermodynamics and acoustics. The general quality of frequency puts pressure on disciplinary divisions and modes of classification, amplifying dynamic relations across divergent processes, demonstrating the coextensiveness of heat and sound, or, following Deleuze and Guattari, the molecular and the molar. Though frequency is general, its variations lend it an instability that is at once epistemological and ontological. This paper takes up frequency across energetic forms of weather and sound, writing through frequency as it comes in and out of mattering, receding into imperceptibility and surfacing into detectibility.