Significant Trees
Locke is creating works in relation to various recordings she has gathering from significant trees nationally and internationally. She begins by taking a laser scan of each significant tree. This process attracts attention from the general public and the artist records conversations she has about the relevance of each tree with passers-by. Fruit is collected and cast in bronze to preserve elements of each tree for all time. A bell is then cast tuned to the frequency of each tree. The artist will create compositions and live music events using the bells as she continues to seek out significant trees and the collection grows. More info
Sound Fountains
Sound Fountains is an interactive installation, which remains a major part of Caroline Locke’s body of research. Sound waves moving through water enable the audience to “see” sound. This is a great spectacle to witness – like watching fireworks or gazing across an ever-changing seascape.
The Frequency of Trees at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Influenced by the scientific theory that all things vibrate, Locke has experimented with making particular frequencies visible using cymatics – the sending of sound through water in order to visualise it. She has also been recording the movement of trees and exploring ways to relate this data to sound.
Heart Sensing Sound Fountain
The audience is asked to place their fingertip on top of the heart shaped sensor, to hold in place for as long as they like to see what happens to the Sound Fountains. The sensor locates the participant’s heart rate and their pulse triggers tones, which are sent to the Sound Fountain – a sweep of 30HZ-40HZ for the smaller Fountain and 28HZ – 41HZ for the larger. They watch as the waves synchronize with their own beating heart.
Hastings Sound Fountain
As a sensor on Hastings Pier tracks the rise and fall of the sea waves, frequencies sweep through the Sound Fountain, causing ripples and wave formation on the water surface. The activity in the water of the Sound Fountain corresponds to the distance between the surface of the water and the sensor attached to the Hastings Pier.
Chancel Frequencies
Chancel Frequencies at 20-21 Arts Centre features three works especially selected to respond to the former church building as a contemplative space, portraying images of sound, which are otherworldly, and designed to encourage contemplation.
Sound Fountains at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
During an artist residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Locke studied how the audience responded to her new interactive setting. The installation was set up to explore the relationship between the intangible and the tangible, making visible the things we normally cannot see. This idea had a particular resonance in the Chapel at YSP.
Singing Pools
Singing Pools is an interactive water sculpture designed for a public outdoor space. Shallow steel pools are situated just below the water surface. The pools shudder and vibrate as visitors approach causing ripples and wave formations to travel across the surface of an expanse of water.
Sound Inventory
Sound Inventory involves various sounds from around the world, which Locke has recorded and collected for almost two decades. Some of these processed samples are then passed through water and captured using digital stereomicroscopy to create beautiful and intriguing images, each revealing a clear visual relationship with the original sound source. Each sound, place of recording, date and time is notated in an inventory chart.
Sound Fountains at Nottingham Contemporary
Sound waves moving through water enable the audience to “see” sound and build their own soundscapes within an every changing environment. The artist invited audiences to explore sound visually – deepening their understanding of what sound really is – a series of movements in time - a transmission of energy by a series of vibrations.
Rock Music
Rock Music is a composition created using sounds taken from recordings of the artist Debra Swann making a huge cardboard rock.
Rock Music explores sound in relation to domestic and labour intensive activity – the same vinyl record is played over and over. The sound of the activity becomes abstract and otherworldly when amplified. Mundane working involves repetition – a strange rhythm develops – a kind of chant.
Maastricht Sound Fountain
Locke installed permanent sculptures The Maastricht Sound Fountains within the New International school of Governance at the University Of Maastricht, Holland. For this site-specific work, the artist recorded student voices and sounds from the environment around the building. These sounds were processed and combined within synthesised tracks, then amplified through the surface of the water to create waveforms and fountains.
Hydrophonics
Locke received an Award for Excellence in Research for Hydrophonics, an amazing live performance where 7 musicians’ instruments were connected to her Sound Fountains so that the sound waves were visible on the water’s surface. The audience was able to watch and listen to sonic compositions based on the sight of the sound from above a stage purposely built for this exclusive event.
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Hydrophonics on line
This Live Performance incorporated a three-way event which was simultaneously experienced at the School of Music Conservatorium, Monash University Australia, Internationally on the world wide web and as part of a special event at the Radiator ‘Festival for New Technology Art: Live over IP’ in Nottingham UK.
Breath
A stunning amalgam of spiralling water, video loops and pulsating soundscapes, Breath takes us back to basics: heartbeat and the need to breathe. This largescale installation harnesses the circulatory force of water and the sound vibrations of the human heart to immerse the viewer in the experience of natural polarities, expansion and contraction, stability and instability, order and chaos.
Pelleas and Mellisande
Running alongside Opera North’s touring Opera, Caroline Locke was commissioned to create an installation based on’ Dubussy’s ‘Pelleas and Melisande’ with dancer Kerry Nicholls and music by Tractor.
Three video loops follow the emotional experiences of the three characters involved in the love triangle which dominates the story line.The steel pools reflect the imagery of the video projections on their water surface. The reflection is broken when the pools vibrate turning still waters into turbulent waters.
Vortex Machine
After studying in detail the movement of water during her time making her Maelstrom sculptures, Caroline became fascinated by the movement of water. She studied flow systems, the power of water, how it holds on to energy and how heat moves through it. She experimented and spent many months researching in the Thermodynamics Laboratory. Vortex Machine was exhibited in Melbourne at the Bourgie Gallery.
Fear Factor Seven
FEAR FACTOR SEVEN is Caroline Locke’s seven screen video installation exploring the curious relationship we have with superstitions. From knocking on wood to saluting lone magpies this installation is an examination of the fear factor associated with superstition and perceived safety of rituals intended to counteract bad luck.
Badnoise
The first Badnoise records were mastered and cut at Abbey Road Studios in London.
BADNOISE is, amongst other things, a homage to the vinyl record. Locke experimented with two record decks–rewiring one of the decks so that it rotated the turntable in the opposite direction, thus playing the record backwards. Both record decks play the same record at the same time, one backward, one forwards.
Cannington Memorial Globe
The Memorial Globe is cast in bronze and has a diameter of 300mm. On its surface there is a map of Cannington, a picturesque village in Somerset, UK. The globe sits within a stainless steel canopy so that it can spin across two axis points.
It was commissioned as a public sculpture by Cannington Parish Council for their Chairman in honour of his service to the community. The globe functions as a guide to the village as well as an interesting moving interactive sculpture.
Dean Clough Pendulum
At Dean Clough in Halifax – in connection with the Henry Moore Foundation – Locke hung a 40 foot pendulum over the loading bays of the mill face. Only functional when moved manually by people, this work introduced ongoing areas of investigation in Locke’s work: notions of direct interaction; the transference of energy from one body to another, and the relationship between moving human and mechanical bodies.
Maelstrom at Nottingham Castle
Maelstrom is one of Locke’s water sculptures. It uses the coriolis effect to conduct water through spiraling pools. Maelstrom was developed further at Nottingham Castle to become a piece of site-specific public sculpture in the grounds, with five pools sending water cascading in opposite directions along the side of the Eastern Terrace steps.