the central plateau of tasmania. audio oscillator circuits made of raw materials from the landscape. sounding out interactions between electricity, matter, and place.
materials used to create oscillator circuits, such as thinly shaved pencil pine layered with copper foil to create capacitors, magnetite ore as inductor cores, and vials of tarn water forming resistors, are wired together with neon globes under high voltages to form audio oscillators. these individual circuits - simple abstractions of natural relations and connections - are built into multiples that form complex responsive groups and environments.
this practice traces the flow of electrons through the solid heart of matter to create sonic landscapes that speak of the austere alpine plateau of tasmania, and its embedded cycles of geological and environmental histories.
natural materials are prepared into electronic components through laborious hand preparation - finely shaving endemic woods and layering with copper foil to create capacitor banks - grinding down local dolerite rock into thin translucent slices using diamond lap saws and conductive epoxies to create resistor discs - or collecting vials of tarn and lake water to create comparative resistors. current experimental trials are using finely sieved lakeshore sand grains to create diy sand-interlayer-capacitors, slicing and aligning the found bone of a tasmanian devil to act as a planar resistor, the compararison of local lake waters using a parallel array of identical oscillators, and various iterations of novel oscillator architectures…. most oscillator designs are based on simple neon circuits - multivibrator, ring, or relaxation circuits, using voltages in the 60-280 volt range. some low voltage transistor based circuits based on phase shift or tank circuits are also used, as well as hex schmitt inverter groups.
imaging the very same materials as used in the oscillators, spark discharge photography complements the sonic aspect of the exhibitions with visual understanding, exposing detailed patterns of interaction and resonance, between electricity and matter.
earlier work, from solo exhibitions at sawtooth gallery (launceston 2024) and salamanca arts centre (hobart 2023), using natural materials and decaying man-made materials from ruins in the area...
the plateau…..
images from around cradle mountain, lake st clair, blue peaks, lake nameless, suttons tarn, little fischer river, projection bluff, and pine lake, including x-rays of a young female devil (roadkill, poor girl) and underwater lakescapes. archival image of the rainbow chalet by s.martin, and historic correspondence, both courtesy of the tasmanian archives.
