Orfield Labs
Orfield Labs
Orfield Labs is home to one of the quietest places on earth, and perhaps fittingly, it keeps a pretty low profile in Seward. When I visited with a few friends recently, we initially drove past the place two times.
In the front lawn of the building, there’s just one small sign that reads “Orfield Laboratories Inc.” There isn’t much else to differentiate it from other businesses in the neighborhood. Across the street, there’s a liquor store, Skol Liquor. Memory Lanes is a block away.
You might not know, just from a glance at the foliage-covered building, the deep well of Minnesota history inside Orfield Labs. Yes, its “anechoic chamber” holds the 2005 and 2013 Guinness World Record for the quietest place on Earth—a title which has since been usurped by Microsoft’s anechoic chamber in Redmond, Washington. “Anechoic” literally means without echoes. It’s a small room constructed to be utterly devoid of sound.
But at one time, the building was also the recording space for the likes of Bob Dylan, Prince, and several other artists. These days, Orfield Labs is occupied with less sexy—though still important—endeavors. Companies can book the anechoic chamber to test the acoustics of vacuums and other products. Orfield also does consulting for various architectural projects.
As part of the Great Northern Festival, Orfield opened up its anechoic chamber to groups of four for $60 a person. The chamber is actually regularly available to the public, though you will pay about double for an appointment during non-festival time. My friends and I reasoned that a 30-minute trip to one of the quietest places on Earth was worth the discounted price.
The festival quickly sold out of slots after we bought our tickets.
The lobby of the place harkens back to its glory days as a music recording studio. On the wall are eight records recorded there: Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Leo Kottke’s Burnt Lips, The Suburbs’ Love Is the Law, among others. Lipps, Inc. recorded its chart-topping single “Funkytown” in the studio. That was back in the day when famed Sound 80 recording studio still occupied the building.
“That’s where I recorded ‘Funkytown,’” songwriter Steven Greenberg told The Current in 2014. “It was tape, 24-track tape, and it wasn’t always accurate… But it was a great place to be, they had great technical assistance there, and great engineers. And Sound 80 will always have a place in my heart forever.”
That’s all well and good, but it wasn’t quite enough to calm my nerves once it was time to get inside the soundless chamber. The internet is rife with accounts of people allegedly losing sanity in the utter absence of sound. Smithsonian Magazine has a 2013 article headlined: “Earth’s Quietest Place Will Drive You Crazy in 45 Minutes.” As I stared at the eerie soundproof panels jutting out of every wall, I wondered, Could that happen to me?
Our guide led me and three of my friends to four chairs in the center of the chamber. Four lightbulbs hung overhead. We were actually seated atop a springy platform; beneath us, there were more rows of fiberglass soundproofing panels. The guide asked us if we wanted the lights on or off for the duration of our 30-minute stay inside. Internally, I panicked for a moment and looked to my companions for guidance.
“Can we do half and half? Half lights on, half lights off?” one of my friends asked.
“Sure.”
Before the guide sealed us in our silent tomb, I made sure to ask if we were able to exit in case of emergency. He reassured me that the door would be unlocked the entire time.
The first few minutes of silence were unsettling. My ears initially deceived me into thinking I’d just heard an extraordinarily loud sound—the sort of feeling you get after a front-row concert experience. A ringing in my ears. One of my friends wondered if he had tinnitus all along; I told him I was having a similar experience.
From then on, we all agreed not to talk to better appreciate the experience.
As time went on, I settled into the silence. It became sort of meditative. OK, I thought to myself, I can make it through these 15 minutes with the lights on. Almost there.
When the lights went off, I felt a fresh wave of panic. It again subsided quickly. There was no real difference when my eyes were closed or open, so I just left them open, staring into the void. Deprived of both light and sound, I felt a slight sting of loneliness. There was nothing, aside from the occasional stomach gurgle or deep breath, to validate my companions’ existence. That, too, felt scary at first.
I couldn’t see or hear them, but I knew they were there. I took a few more deep breaths and settled into the void.
Some accounts say you can hear your own blood pumping inside anechoic chambers. That never happened to me or my companions, though the sound of every swallow and breath seemed magnified by 10.
I had fallen into a meditative trance when the lights finally came back on and our guide returned. Despite all the harrowing accounts I’d read about extended periods of time inside anechoic chambers, I actually wasn’t ready to leave. Sure, there’s some level of anticlimax to the whole affair; I mean, we literally just paid $60 each to sit in silence for 30 minutes. But we all agreed we felt some sense of intangible restoration in the chamber. Perhaps those accounts of insanity are a bit of fear-based nonsense from writers who’ve never actually experienced the chamber themselves.
And perhaps I’m not the only one who felt healed by the experience. Some folks who visited have said the experience “reset their brains,” per a 2017 Star Tribune article.
“We think there’s great potential for therapeutic uses,” the lab’s owner and namesake Steve Orfield told the paper. He said the chamber could be a place of healing for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, among other conditions.
If given the opportunity, I’d certainly do it again.
