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Ripples on the surface of water

cloud _to_air

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Seth is an American sound artist who is keen to explore relationships between sound, light and space; how sound and light wave propagation differs. It’s a beautiful, physical experience that not only proposes to think about sound and image captured from its source, but also considers the physical effects of sound and image in real time. Trays of water will be shaken to create standing wave patterns as a direct result of what we hear; images of similar things happening to a puddle during a storm will be refracted and bounced around the space due to the vibrations of the water.

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What’s going on here? Field recordings Seth made of a summer’s lightning storms are mixed with thin sine tones that have been tuned to the gallery space. Video projections of heavy rain on shallow water are bounced of similarly shallow water in specially built metal trays, shaken by the sound of thunder. The gallery will be almost completely dark, save 3 bright rectangular pools about an inch deep. The light coming from the pools is a video loop of a puddle during a rainstorm.

We at Arika wrote a thing for a John Butcher CD which applies here, so we’re going to be lazy and just include it: “As you and I know, sound is relational. It doesn’t travel in the straight lines of Euclidian geometry, from A to B like a train or your plumbing. It propagates, like a gas. Sound leaks round corners, is focused by curves, travels at different speeds through metal, stone or water. It articulates space and time. Unlike light, which to all intents and purposes is instantaneous, sound moves slowly enough for us to understand.” We think that these distinctions and differences apply to Seth and his work, but brought together and synthesised: how do you look at sound and light, but rather than think of them as separate, consider them to be co-joined at the point of their creation in some way?

Documentation

6 images, 1 video
Grey lit pool of water, rippling in sympathy with sounds

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

An audience seated around a pool of water with projections on its surface

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Close up of the surface of a pool of water

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Close up of a pool of water

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Close up of a pool of water

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Ripples on the surface of water

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Grey lit pool of water, rippling in sympathy with sounds

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

An audience seated around a pool of water with projections on its surface

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Close up of the surface of a pool of water

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Close up of a pool of water

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Close up of a pool of water

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Ripples on the surface of water

▴ Credit: Bryony McIntyre

Artists

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