In September 2021, after finishing their project on the acoustic heritage of Thingvellir National Park, the Acoustic Heritage Collective decides to take their portable recorders to Snæfellsjökull, the famous Icelandic volcano that, according to Jules Verne's book "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", takes the protagonists of this famous story to the depths of the earth. This place is the starting point to create an immersive sound piece entitled "Journey to the Centre of Sound", in which sounds, soundscapes, acoustic reverberations, poetry and the music of the band Hoarfrost mix with visuals and fog to create a unique composition.

This sonic quest was extremely different from what we might be used to. Iceland's unique nature, adverse weather and geological phenomena lead to an aural journey that is hard to forget.

In science, as in mathematics, a substantial part of knowledge results from the analysis of boundary conditions. Iceland represents this. It is to stand on the edge of the earth and listen to how our geography is (de)constructed. It is fascinating to imagine what it was like in the past when it was all ice, and terrifying to hear how new surfaces emerge from the centre of the planet. Like Axel and Otto Lidenbrock, the two characters in the 1864 novel who set out on their journey to Iceland equipped with food, tools, weapons, instruments, torches and a first aid kit, the collective decided to travel with equipment that allows a new dimension of listening. Equipped with different recording instruments, such as electromagnetic field microphones, contact microphones, omnidirectional microphones and hydrophones, they went into different landscapes, listening to and recording sounds from glaciers, geysers, lava caves, polar winds and waterfalls, thus challenging the limits of human hearing.

"Journey to the centre of sound" is an acoustic synthesis, where each sound source, so different from each other but representing the same feeling, is tuned to create a new sound object.

In addition to sounds, the acoustic characteristics of the spaces were recorded on ambisonics. Their reverberation, defined as the interaction of reflected sound waves on each surface of the physical space, is the most relevant acoustic parameter for the localisation of sound sources. In this way, this composition opens up new immersive acoustic spaces, in which sound objects are redesigned in a new sound/space relationship. The auralisation of these spaces allows us to construct a sound story in three dimensions, from inside and outside, from below and above or from above and below.

This sound journey, beyond aesthetics, aims to relate space to the past, present and future by offering a broad and fresh approach to sound mapping and acoustic ecology.