rings on water
Audio work and release 2022
commissioned by Focal Point Gallery for FPG sounds, an online programme of new audio works.
Rings on Water is a collection of sonic fieldnotes developed as part of Leaky Transmissions, an ongoing body of research and artwork shaped by the unruly entanglements of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex.
A fixed edition of 125 cassettes were produced with a total length of 46.7 minutes - the same duration of the half-life of Caesium 125 (125Cs). Because caesium isotopes are volatile and can diffuse through nuclear fuel or air, caesium is often created far from the original site of fission. Rings on Water uses a variety of recording and transmission technologies, from FM radio, magnetic tape, coil receivers, hydrophones and contact mics to traverse the protected saltmarshes and shale banks of the Dengie Peninsula and industrial arable land. Slow Scan Television, and the politics of ‘radio’ as a means of transmission, collision, translation and interference are used to consider the material legacies of changing land-use and energy production in the Blackwater Estuary.
Many types of human transmission commingle and leave their mark on the Estuary, which is itself an increasingly regulated and privatised space. Cellular networks coalesce with wireless connections, electrical substations with Bluetooth signal, slow-scan television with ham radio transmissions. High-frequency short wavelengths of irradiated graphite within Bradwell A Power Station occupy the opposite end of radio spectrum to the long wavelengths of amateur radio and VLF signals generated by thunderstorms and solar weather. Non-human forces persist, from the Estuary's conductive geology, to sputtering background radiation, to the Earth's vast and sweeping electromagnetic fields.
Rings on Water was originally commissioned by Focal Point Gallery for their experimental sound programme, building on Nastassja Simensky and Rebecca Lee's previous collaborations and drawing on their shared interest in time, listening, material culture and land-use.
Available to buy on Bandcamp
Field recordings, vocals, text, Nastassja Simensky
Composition, processing, transmissions, mixing, Rebecca Lee
Recorded Black Water Estuary Essex, and Primary, Nottingham, spring/summer 2022.