www.simonwhetham.co.uk
subnet, Austria, September 2020
Austrian arts organisation subnet invited me to participate in their residency programme of 2020, in which they were given spaces and support by Schmiede20 festival in Hallein. The artists studios are spaces in an old salt farm in the village. However, because of many issues brought about by the global pandemic, I was unable to travel to Austria. Kindly the organisations allowed me to work from my home studio, currently in Marseille, France.
'Closed System' (working title)
Week One (16th - 22nd September 2020)
To visit Week Two click HERE
Having managed to borrow a small electric drill from friend Jeff Rollings here in Marseille I have started making a base for the cooling system. The motherboard chamber now has a small platform to sit on that raises it up and stops the tubes from bending so much they fold and restrict the flow (although this could be an interesting effect once I get the thing up and running.
You can also see my makeshift woodworking atelier, which is situated on the balcony of our apartment here in Marseille.
Various thicknesses of MDF board, wooden dowel, screws, nuts and bolts of various sizes, drill bits... my shopping list so far. Plus the ever-faithful Velcro strips. I'll use these to fix the 'radiator' and pump unit to the board as firstly I can easily reposition both and secondly I am hoping Velcro will also isolate the sound of the pump from the board somewhat. Logic tells me it should!
So over this weekend and the next week I will fix the various elements to the board and then begin recording sessions in the city, both from underwater and also from another cyclical system, the various roundabouts in Marseille.
The last two images on the left show my method to mount the pumps and radiator to the base board. I am using self-adhesive felt pads to lessen the sound transfer to the board to some degree. So the smaller boards you see to the left are glued together with the pads between.
The lower image shows the same idea but with a larger board that will be fixed to the radiator and then attached to the base board using Velcro strips.
There are a few more photos to come, but an important development to close this first week - yes a week has already passed! - is that these pump motors do not respond well to recorded sound impulses... this is a little annoying as the concept did revolve around using water sounds, or sounds of circulation (which actually translates as traffic from french to english).
Another development is that one Arduino will not run the two motors for some reason which is not clear to me right now... so for now I am running one and using some simple programming for constant flow and random action.
I did make some recordings yesterday, and also discovered I need to rebuild at least one of my contact mics, but here's a quick layered version of the session.
