HeyClay Event

Ceramic Sound

 

I have explored these notions within my practice in relation to the HeyClay event, in association with St Fagan’s museum and processes used to produce artefacts of Welsh heritage. Titled “A Play on Extraordinary Processes’, the event aimed to bring to life through ceramic processes, the skills and craftsmanship embedded within the museum as well as offer members of the public the chance to participate in ceramic demonstrations.

For this event, I produced a series of 3D prints as well as porcelain outcomes that rendered the sounds within different ceramic processes used to produce artefacts of Welsh heritage within the museum of St Fagan’s.

 

To make this work, I began by recorded the sounds of ‘the wheel’, ‘wedging’, ‘slip pouring’, and ‘turning’, each being signature processes at different stages with ceramics. With these sound files, I was then able to use digital software and online resources to convert the audio sound into a visual sound wave. This sound wave image is processed by software replicating the pressure caused by the vibration of sound energy, creating a sequence of bars.

I was then able to transfer the image into a three-dimensional surface that could be extruded and wrapped into an annulus to create the final design. I chose the ring-like shape to mirror the cylindrical actions within most of the ceramic process chosen or the archetypal cylindrical vessel as well as draw upon notions within the production or capturing the music in the form of records or CDs. These pieces have connotations of the record player and vinyl disks, not only with the black coloured black but due to the lines left behind within the 3D printing processes.

 

The piece’s intention is to make the viewer more aware of the sound they are listening too, through the sensorial experience of viewing the sound as a physical object. As well as the haptic sense of torch and engagement with the physical sound. The work is cast high fired porcelain, capturing not only the sound in detail but the very tiny lines of the digital manufacturing process, like the lines of a digital fingerprint; used to produce a piece of work that could only be achieved through the application of technology alongside material engagement.

 

To achieve the work, I had to not only use technology but the handcrafted skills of mould making within plaster to obtain the complex form in porcelain. Without the combination of these skills, digital and the manual in equal measure, these objects would not be possible.

These objects and the methodology can be applied further than abstract sounds of processes, but it could be applied to any form of measurable data that can be captured. Rendering human experiences of a place or event, for example, the sounds from a video of a family day at the beach. Provoking memories and encapsulating an individual from data or even a means of getting people engaged with heritage. Giving human connection and sensorial embodiment to an object, something that the use of digital technology is meant to be lacking in.