A27 ZEN GARDEN

A27 Zen Garden, stone, bark, pots, amplifier, speakers, mp3 player, treated sound recording. Approx 5m diameter (2010)

For this show the request was to respond to the village in which the show takes place - Falmer, on the outskirts of Brighton. Falmer is fascinating in that it is on the edge in many ways; the edge of the town, and hence the edge of the countryside; the edge of knowledge (it is the location for Brighton and Sussex Universities) and the edge of a new chapter in the fortunes of Brighton and Hove Albion football team, as the new stadium is currently being built there.

Falmer is also partially defined by the A27 dual carriageway which bisects the village. I had been getting interested in the balance of symmetry, pragmatism and beauty in motorway junctions, and I decided to use the junction at Falmer as the basis for my work, re-imagining the normally liminal and frantic space as a place for pause and reflection.

The work consisted of a recreation of the form of the junction in stone and bark, and a recording of the traffic at the junction which had been treated and layered in Ableton Live, played through four speakers at a low volume which left the actual sound of the road still audible in the distance. Visitors were able to walk along the paths, in a slow-motion recreation of the passage of cars on the real junction.

This piece also touched on one of my favourite themes; how the visual and audio elements of a piece come together to create something new; neither one, nor the other, nor simply a sum of the parts.

Exhibited at 'What the fxxx is happening now 2010', Court House, Falmer near Brighton, 14/08/10.