This
immersive Light, Space and Sound garden was created using the principles of
cymatics, where sound is visualised as vibrations in fluids or powders. The
work was inspired by a W.B. Yeats poem about being still and silent, so the
sound is designed to create balance and entrainment. The composition includes throat singing,
Pythagoras’ maths of intervals, Tibetan ringing bowls and Solfeggio tones,
aimed to synchronise breath and brainwaves to a stable, calming frequency and
elevated state of consciousness.
In
the context of keyboard warrior noise, cancel culture and emotionally
aggressive discourse on social media, the work is a safe space to breathe.
Whilst being a beautiful sensory environment, the piece asks us to reflect on
the value of community and collective responsibility compared with the disease
of decadence – narcissism and the cult of individuality. The title refers to
ripples at the surface of matter, which do not reflect the body or depth of it,
an allegory of media-loud and self-aggrandising “slacktivism”.
“We
can make our minds so like still water, that beings gather about us. That they
may see, it may be, their own images. And live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life. Because of our quiet. Our
silence.” Yeats, William Butler, (1893) The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and
Folklore, Dover Publications 2011
