Dilatation, Newport, 2005

An expansion joint linking together two segments of motorway was filmed from below. Light from the sky is streaming through a horizontal row of apertures where the metal teeth of the joint engage.  As vehicles pass overhead, sections of the gap are momentarily obscured, and a sharp percussive sound is heard. 

Millions of individual journeys, undertaken for unknown purposes, are registered as they pass this point.  The exact conditions on impact (number of wheels, speed, weight, weather etc.) determine the quality of the sounds produced: dry thuds, rolling volleys, staccato bursts, roars approaching and disappearing again in the distance. 

A stilled slice is cut from the endless stream of traffic, and made perceptible in its immediacy and complexity. The momentary actuations of this randomized shutter are complemented by the cyclic, gradual opening and closing of the joint as the seasons change and material contracts and expands.

Leuchten, since 2001

A variety of streetlights are recorded – the camera is stationary and the subject centrally framed.  Apart from the lights, a small portion of the sky is also visible.  While night begins to fall, the artificial light ignites, proceeds through various changes of colour, and after a few minutes reaches its full intensity.

The methodology is similar to that of a scientific experiment – a clearly defined, reproducible situation. The complexity of a simple process becomes visible, a process which is taking place billions of times every day, and continuously along the boundary of night advancing across the globe. 

The ambient sound recorded with the image plays an important role.  Traffic, pedestrians, wind, water, birdsong and rain complement the gradual waxing and waning of the light with a sometimes unpredictable, sometimes rhythmic structure. Nature and civilisation are not weighed against each other, but the random composition that is generated by their interaction is opened to experience.  Each light references the grid it is part of, but is also the marker of a specific location, established by the sound events that haunt it. 

The active / creative character of perception is brought into focus:

Esse est percipi  (to be is to be perceived) – is there a sound if a tree falls in the forest with no one there to hear it?  Do these colours exist if a streetlight flickers into life while unobserved?  Do all these never-noticed streetlights exist? 

 The series Leuchten is open-ended, and new items are occasionally added.  A version of this work was first shown at Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich in 2001, as a large format projection in a darkened room.  Sound is an integral element of Leuchten, and this should be reflected in the presentation.