Gathering Feedback and Exploring the Balance Between Art and Science.

In preparation to really push my practice in the final few weeks before assessment I had tutorials with multiple tutors as a method of gathering opinions and understanding the perspectives others had towards my work. I would then be able to take on any relevant ideas and comments to develop and improve my practice as a whole.

A key idea that arose during these tutorials was to explore the idea of reversing my method of translating sound energy into sculptures and objects and therefore using these objects to create sound. This could then become very cyclical; I would listen to sounds in a landscape, make sculptures in response to this, then make sounds with these objects (while recording this sound), then make sculptures/work in response to this recycled sound, repeating this feedback loop infinitely. Linking to this idea of making sound with my sculptures and casts, the question ‘Could the casts act as speakers?’ also arose.

I would like to make some more ‘Sound Sculptures’ though this time out of a more durable material, as after being in communication with others I have discovered that their intricate, subtle details and small size promote the desire to touch and look at them up close. Being made of unfired clay the sculpture are very delicate and are easily damaged when handled so having them picked up by viewers a lot would not be ideal as their shape would mutate over time. After thinking over the possibilities of different materials to sculpt from I decided that a sculpture cast in a metal would be a good option to test out.

While thinking and researching theoretical ideas in relation to my practice I have been able to articulate that my practice is an exploration of the balance between art and science. I am continually exploring different tangents and ideas, working out where my practice lies along this line between two polar opposite fields of study. My methods of measuring landscapes and collecting and studying specimens of the environments that I work within tie my work to the scientific. However the methods that I use to complete these measurements and the alternative documentation I use show a clear contrast to science’s approaches.

This exploration of art/science led me to the work of Annie Cattrell, an artist who treads the line between scientific research and art within her practice. This is exemplified in her piece Sense, five sculptural visualisations of the brain’s neurological responses to each sense, suspended in glass. In this piece Cattrell is clearly also exploring the merging of art and science, though I would place her work slightly more towards the scientific end of the spectrum than mine. My sound sculptures and sound casts are similar in some ways to Sense, though where Cattrell uses MRI scanning technology to study the brain’s response to sound (and other senses), I use a much more qualitative, subjective, simplified method of simply listening to the sounds of a landscape and simultaneously sculpting in response to them.

Sense (2001-2003), Annie Cattrell

The idea of comparing the very human, personal translation of sound into visual/sculptural material to a more mechanical, scientific response is a concept that I have become interested in recently. Watching the documentary ‘When Bjork Met Attenborough’ I discovered the Chladni Plate, a piece of equipment which can use create a visual representation of the properties of sound waves of differing frequencies – the sound waves cause sand which is placed on top of the plate, to form into geometric patterns according to the frequency of sound that is being played through it.

Chladni Plate images from When Björk Met Attenborough (2013)

Seeing this sparked the idea to make my own simplified Chladni Plate to further explore the materiality of sound waves in my practice. I massively simplified this piece of equipment in my own version, meaning that it would likely not create the geometric patterns seen in the documentary: I used a large speaker laid on its back with a metal plate laid over it, placing tiny pieces of dried clay onto the metal. I then played a sound recording, taken at Pendennis Point beach when I was creating some of my sound sculptures, through the speaker at high volume in order to make the clay move in response to the sound vibrations. This method did work to move the clay around the metal, though as expected, did not create any notable patterns, though perhaps because of the mixed frequencies of the audio piece. I intend to take this idea further as a method of mechanical, non-human translation of sound energy, using wet clay in future in an attempt to create drawings with sound waves, a scientific, mechanical automatic drawing.

My DIY, simplified Chladni Plate

Some videos of my simplified Chladni Plate in use