My practice explores the enigmatic and omnipresent nature of sound. In an attempt to reveal sound’s importance and beauty; the work harnesses the art world’s most treasured sense- sight- bridging the gap between what can be seen and heard. The prints that are created seek to visualise sound by acting as visual echoes of fleeting and ephemeral moments in time. Taking something that is intangible and invisible and transforming it into something tangible, visible and descriptive of what sound is, how it behaves and how we as people experience it.
Sound only lasts momentarily until its sound waves disperse, dissipate, or are reflected until they can no longer be heard and only exist within the mind as a memory. Image reproduction within the process creates no print exactly alike, with slight differences in colour, pixelation and statism which relates to how sound and the evanescent moments they originate from cannot be identically replicated and repeated. Leading the viewer to reflect on the fragility of sound, time, moments and more deeply life as they are all united by an eventual end. Fleeting sounds captured in a snapshot, time frozen for just a moment and a life lived in a blink of an eye, attempting to get the viewer to reflect, pay attention and notice the small wonders and phenomena within our world.
Each step of my process is a transformation; transforming sound into motion, motion into image, image into distortion.
The crux of my practice is cymatics, the study of visualising sound vibrations and frequencies. The process begins by placing water on top of a resonant surface and placing speakers underneath. Sound vibrations played from the speaker system cause the water to react and move. Each individual frequency creates a different physical formation and pattern across the water’s surface. Using photography, the fleeting moment is memorialised. Each chosen photograph then undergoes the process of water transfer printing; allowing each photograph to fold, ripple, disintegrate, dissolve and distort. The newly transferred and produced images create a more object-like image rather than an obvious photograph which reflects how sound dissipates, travels, is reflected, absorbed and distorted. Using printers and scanners, each iteration of the image becomes unique to the last by introducing statism, pixelation and marks of erasure which cannot be replicated and instead left to chance.
All work is available to purchase. Please contact me for further details.
