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The Wave is Not the Water 1

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

The work was presented as an installation at the Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2023 and selected for the GSA archive. It was also shown in 2023 at GSA’s summer show POST, and the Old Contemporaries exhibition in Dundee.

The Wave is Not the Water 1
The Wave is Not the Water 1
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