The copper coil was working; I had developed and perfected the method for the perfect batch of paper – See the Papermaking entry and Part 1 + 2 Making Large Paper Speakers
Now it was time to put this to the test and prepare the works for an exhibition. In June 2020, I was accepted to create a large paper speaker for the Wrocław Survival Festival. Each year the festival occupies an abandoned and unused space in the city and fills it with art. It is one of the most prominent festivals within the city and was a huge honour to take part in. The piece was designed to sit over an old pump in the water pumping station; here is the original sketch for the project.
The Resonance of Waste was born out of a collaboration with fellow printmaker Sarah Epping. The idea of making paper from seaweed to combat algae overgrowth had been a long-running conversation between us. During a trip to Muhu Island, off the coast of Estonia, we began to collect this slimy substance.
We found it made a very strong, resilient paper. The process was particularly stinky, and harvesting the seaweed was also equally disgusting. However, in normal papermaking, a chemical is often required to break down the lignin; the good news was it did not require any heavy chemicals as algae and seaweed is lignin free and almost purely cellulose. However, we did add a touch of regular bleach to the pulp to remove some smell and some of the green colour.
We had not sourced the perfect large container for the paper pulp, so we found a child's paddling pool made do. You can see the process photos of the stages, including embedding the coils inside the paper. The most tricky thing was transporting the copper wire from the board to the layers of paper; this was done only through teamwork and a steady hand.
Here you can see a video of the first paper tests. This was done with a small 35W amp.
The audio was collected from Räpina, a paper mill in Southern Estonia. The owner told me that an audio project had been previously done there, by sound artist Patrick Mcginley: patrick tubin mcginley (aka murmer) is an american-born sound, performance, and radio artist who has been based in europe since 1996. since then he has been building a collection of found sounds and found objects that has become the basis of all his work. in 2002 he founded framework, an organisation that produces a weekly field-recording themed radio show, broad- and podcasting around the world. in 2005 he first visited estonia, and relocated there permanently in 2009. most recently mcginley has been giving presentations, workshops, and performances based on the exploration of site-specific sound and sound as definition of space. in live performance his interest in field recording has developed into an attempt to integrate and resonate found sounds, found objects, specific spaces, and moments in time, in order to create a direct and visceral link with an audience and location.
I got in touch, and Patrick Agreed to collaborate on a later project – details on which can be found in the Sound of the Spheres post.
THE SET-UP
I was unable to set up the work in person, so the team at Survival festival kindly did this for me. There was an issue with the sound, not being as loud as before. It was something to do with the shape of the pump. So the team had to improvise, and they ended up connecting a 100W amplifier. I was super hesitant about this, but nothing terrible happened, which is good to know.
Here is the final video of the piece in place.
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