A new work “Transformer” has been installed at the UnderCliff Vineyard in Wollembi alongside “Spinner” which remains in-situ from last year.
My approach to the sonic domain has always been informed by a Sculptor’s perspective which emphasises the experiential nature of sounds, linking them to the dynamic, material events that produce them and situating them within the environments that contain and propagate them.
Transformer would appear to disqualify itself from the definition of Sound-Sculpture by virtue of its apparent muteness. The principal function of the work, however, is to manifest an aura; a low-energy electro-magnetic field, drawn from the atmosphere by the primitive antennae, which then flows through the coils that encircle the embalmed larvae. These crude technical devices resonate in an infinitesimal manner and thus in it’s own way the work sings.
One of our principal oversights is to demand that nature exists only by virtue of our sense organs, like infants we carelessly assume that events that which we cannot perceive do not exist. What the ear fails to hear is therefore mute.
Perhaps these are Sound-Sculptures which are simply inaudible!
