I got invited by this year curator of Vestlandsutstillingen in Norway, to make an outdoor piece to stand outside the museum of Kabuso. There are copious amounts of rain on the west coast of Norway, and I’ve always wanted to create a work that is using the rain to generate a movement or a development.
The rain is collected through a funnel made of ceramics, and drippes down into the ground, where a mechanism hits a bell once enough rain has come. If you stand in the rain and listen, a bell will chime once in a while.
In Japanese
zen gardens, the presence of water is important and there are often different
water mechanisms, which also create sound. This could be a "shishi
odoshi", which is a kind of bamboo fountain. When it is filled up with
water, it will tip and fall onto a rock with a loud "clack!”. Another
garden instrument is the underground "suikinkutsu". Here you can not
see the mechanism in itself, but you can hear the sound of water dropping in an
underground cave. My work is inspired by such water mechanisms, and buried beneath
the ground, there is a rather large mechanism box, with a hidden bellsystem.
When there is not rain, the visitor could use a watercan to activate the sound. The watercan was standing on the opposite side of the garden, just next to a fountain.