This summer I had the privilege to shbe invited to show wrk at the stunningly beautiful gardens at Wakehurst – Kew’s wild botanical Garden in West Sussex, as part of the ‘Summer of Sound’ outdoor exhibition. I was so thrilled to have the chance to install ‘Water Balance‘ in the Japanese water garden, amongst the incredible display of irises. here are some pictures of the work.

Water Balance is a pond dwelling kinetic sound sculpture activated by balancing bodies of water. Flowing water pours into six vessels until they overbalance, tip and empty into the pond activating gongs to form a resonating, generative composition. Each vessel is a different size, and each gong a different pitch, creating an evolving composition from gradually phasing patterns over long time periods which overlap in different combinations as conditions change and may never repeat. For Summer of Sound, I also designed a completely new version of Water Balance to work with the natural flow of water down some stepped streams leading to the Japanese garden, using small bells instead of gongs. The idea was to gently sonify the rate of water flowing through the landscape.

Water Balance was originally commissioned by Cryptic for a group show ‘Below the Blanket’ at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 2019. Below are a few photos of the installation at Wakehurst.