Sound Installation, 5,21 min
You are standing on a spot where the water throughout the time has fed the industry with power. At this place “The Tube” – a 335 meter long pipe of black steel that binds the upper and lower power stations of Tollered together – arborise from one solid body into many.
Ur vatten is a site specific sound art installation situated by the old power plant in Tollered, Nääs, Sweden. Ur vatten has its starting point in the water and its historical significance for the village. Visually and sonically it takes you back to the time when the village was dependent on the water running through its core. The water travels from one lake to another and binds the upper and lower part of the village Tollered together. When the water passes Tollered, it has through time been transformed into power and labour; power when converting into electricity in the power stations; labour when the village turned into a spinning factory area. The installation was exhibited June 15 – Aug 12 2018, Nääs Fabriker, Sweden.
The water in front of the building reflects a sound piece of recordings from the surroundings. The sound art composition emerged while the threads that stretches up to the facade was attached to the building, one by one.
The sonic surroundings at one side of the old power station is nowadays occupied by a heavy trafficked highway, and a current stream of water from the dam in front of the building. But if you listen closer you will find a humble stream in the close by gardens, cooing doves building their nests inside the black tubes close to the water surface and an every day varying water stream passing the dam in front of the facade. Entering the power plant, the interior contains heavy beams and machines ready to sing their iron songs.
These sounds where recorded, mixed and composed in combination with the systematic work of putting up threads, as traces from the spinning factory, coming out of the water and reaching the facade of the old electric power station.
The stereo sound was integrated in the facade of the power plant and played over the water in front of it. The sound composition blends with the existing surrounding and creating a new sonic sphere.
Listen to the stereo track that accompanied the visual installation as wav-file on Soundcloud:
