“Echoes from the wells”


Following a two-week residency in the gallery space at MetaMorphika Studio, Thomas P. Grogan presents an audio installation which looks at the possibilities within sound and sculpture to synthesise our immediate environment. 

Grogan builds on his ongoing research on the compression of space and time catalysed by digital media. How modern technologies and devices, l like computers and smartphones, disrupt our proprioceptive senses (i.e. the placement of body in space) by altering our understanding of distances – with increased access to content from far-flung areas at breakneck speed. His previous work has addressed these concerns through mixed-media sculptures that focus on the consumption of landscapes via digital images. 
Echoes from the wells uses sound to explore how this medium might decompress proprioception. MetaMorphika gallery is located on Morning Lane in London, a narrow road that experiences a significant amount of traffic throughout the day, connecting Homerton to Hackney. During the exhibition, the gallery space becomes a noise cancellation technology, broadcasting the phase-inverted traffic noise after it has been treated by water from a holy well. 

The installation features a central sculpture that generates sound recordings via a microphone positioned outside the gallery, facing the street, captured from inside a small plastic bottle. Water taken from St Ann’s Well in Malvern, Worcestershire, is added to this receptacle, filtering and distorting the surrounding audio. The live recording triggers several additional samples taken from five wells adjoining the Malvern Hills. The sound system is composed of electronic components housed within custom-made metal and cardboard casings. Its skeletal structure disperses sound ambisonically throughout the room. 

Sitting at the top of the Malvern Hills, St Ann’s Well is situated in an old building dating back to the 19th century and is known for providing pure and mineral-rich waters. Historically sought out for its therapeutic properties, the well has been a cornerstone in Malvern’s development from a village into a conurbation, owing to its popularity in the Victorian period as a hydrotherapy spa based on its spring waters. The symbolic and historical healing properties ascribed to the well, said to cure and rejuvenate those who consume its water, make it a speculative material with which Grogan works.
Echoes from the wells considers our spatial interactions through audio; the way that sonic vibrations determined by place could have a potentially stabilising effect on the human inhabitant. And how disconnected environments can be harmonised through sound-based relations. The project experiments with upcycling processes by reusing, reconfiguring, and repurposing existing soundscapes and matter. Moreover, it is an attempt to shape a new, sensitive ecology of time and distance through the consumption of sound through space – local and distant. 

Sound Technician, Stanislav Iordanov
Project Supported by the Arts Council England.