Ondulation

Installation/composition for water, sound and light

Ondulation is a time-based sculptural installation that employs sound to produce images using the media of water and light. The physical presence of sound is revealed through a vivid fusion of auditory and visual perceptions: a constructed synaesthesia. By creating conditions evoking this neurological condition, where the stimulation of one sense results in the apperception of phenomena through another, Ondulation invites reflection on the underlying conditions of perception itself.

The visitor to Ondulation enters a darkened room dominated by a dramatically lit, rectangular volume. At first glance the object appears monolithic – a solid structure with a mirrored upper surface. But as a deep, reverberant sound fills the space, this apparently rigid surface begins to move, revealing itself to be an opaque white liquid. The white object is, in fact, an enormous basin. As involving and evocative patterns of light start to play across the screen behind the basin it becomes evident to the spectator that there is a link between the sound, the moving liquid and the light. The acoustic vibrations emitted by a pair of loudspeakers under the basin’s surface create two sets of concentric waves in the water. These waves radiate to the edge of the basin, creating complex patterns as they overlap and intersect one another. What appears on the screen is a set of reflections produced by theatre lights reflecting off the surface of the waves. The invisible phenomenon of sound is materialized and rendered visible.

Transformed by sound and exposed to light, water becomes a means of precisely transcribing acoustic phenomena into a language of visual expression. This absolute synchronization of sound and image is found in cinematic traditions. But whereas in cinema sound is often subordinated to visual media, Ondulation develops a non-representational vocabulary by fundamentally altering this relationship. Here, far from simply supporting the image, sound actually creates it as an index of itself. The simultaneity of sensory experiences presented by Ondulation provokes an intriguing paradox of perception: are we viewing sound, or hearing light?

Thomas McIntosh