Wave Organ

The Wave Organ is a work of environmental art created by Peter Richards and George Gonzales in 1986. Richards has used PVC piping to produce 'the worlds largest shell'. The tubes connecting to the sea bed are placed to be used as listening devices, connecting the listener closer to the shore beds audio soundscape (and amplifying it).The piece is called Wave organ and it has had a wonderful reception from all those who have experienced it.  The best time to listen to the Wave organ is at high tide - being apx 5.30am - which is the downside of the piece. 


Richards explains, 


"Someone made a recording of the sounds made by water going in and out of a concrete dock in Sydney, Australia. I'd been wanting to add an audible component to my art, and that tape gave me the idea for the Wave Organ."


The Wave Organ's music is a symphony of land and sea, complex, subtle, powerful, hypnotic. Although this is an interesting find for my research, I can't help feeling disheartened by how close to my design this is. However, I am pleased to see that the idea has been tested and works successfully on a large scale. 

Xenakis and Le Corbusier - Architect of Sound.

Poème électronique (English Translation: "Electronic Poem") is a piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. The Philips corporation commissionedLe Corbusier to design the pavilion, which was intended as a showcase of their engineering progress. Corbusier came up with the title Poème électronique, saying he wanted to create a "poem in a bottle". Varèse composed the piece with the intention of creating a liberation between sounds and as a result uses noises not usually considered "musical" throughout the piece.

Varèse designed a very complex spatialization scheme which was synchronized to the film. Prefiguring the acousmonium style of sound projection, hundreds of speakers were controlled by sound projectionists with a series of rotary telephone dials. Each dial could turn on five speakers at a time out of a bank of 12. Many estimates of the pavilion's sound system go as high as 450 speakers, but based on the limitations of the switching system and the number of projectionists used, an estimate of 350 seems more reasonable. The speakers were fixed to the interior walls of the pavilion, which were then coated in asbestos. The resulting appearance was of a series of bumps. The asbestos hardened the walls, creating a cavernous acoustic space.

The spatialization scheme exploited the unique physical layout of the pavilion. The speakers stretched up to the apex of Corbusier's points, and Varèse made great use of the possibilities, sending the sound up and down the walls.^[1]

I feel the experience documented in the above clip of Poème électronique achieves the aims of Expanded cinema. It addresses the live context of watching and transforming cinema's historical and cultural architectures of reception into a site of cinematic experience in a perforative style. Creating a multilayered spatialised experience. I would like to achieve this same spatial experience through the multilaying of sound recordings - creating a new platform to understand the Thames lifecycle.

40 Part Motet by Janet Cardiff at Fabrica, Brighton

As I was walking through the lanes of Brighton I heard what sounded like a coral concert coming from an unpronounced church doorway, on my approach the beautiful coral melodies of a renaissance choral work by Thomas Tallis became more prominent. However, this piece has been reworked under the creative influence of Janet Cardiff, who has recorded each individual choir member seperately (and therefore part) and placed these through a series of speakers placed within a circle. As you can see by the video above, this piece of work is extremely powerful - however I would say better in person as you can appreciate the complexities of both the piece and the performers, it also accentuates the acoustics of the church (not shown in the above video).


Through this adaptation Cardiff promotes 'sound art' but also updates traditional methods and shares them with a new audience. I was extremely moved by this piece and am excited to produce something similar through an circular audio installation of the 24 hour Thames... coming soon.

Acoustics of Shells

The seashell has an inside of which has many hard, curved surfaces great for reflecting sound the ambient noise. The air moving past and within the shell, the blood flowing through your head, the conversation going on in the next room—is resonating inside the cavity of the shell, being amplified and becoming clear enough for us to notice. Different sizes and shapes of shell sound different because different resonant chambers will amplify different frequencies.

Whispering walls

St Pauls

Ideas for Listening devices for the Tidal Thames

Wartime listening device, Capel

A concrete 'ear' on the cliffs near Capel-le Ferne, similar to that on the Dungeness marshes. The idea was to pick up the sound of approaching aircraft, but it was superseded by radar- and faster aircraft.


More Info

Tides - What causes them? How do they work?

Clear Information about Tides

Tide is defined as the vertical movement of water and only goes up and down

Current is the horizontal or sideways flow of water. It floods in which makes the tide rise and ebbs out which makes the tide fall. 

The difference between the high tide and low tide is called the range of tide. For instance, if the water depth at high tide is 20 feet and at low tide is 18 feet, the range of tide is two feet.
There are two types of currents that you can expect in regard to tides.

• Flooding current is experienced when the tide is rising.

• Ebbing current is experienced when the tide is falling.

When the tide has reached it highest and lowest points there is a brief period where there is no current ebbing or flooding, this is referred to as slack water.

The length of time that it takes for the earth to rotate around so that the moon is in the same position is actually a little over a normal 24 hour day. It is 24 hours and 50 minutes or a tidal day. That is why the tidal cycle starts approximately 50 minutes later each day. As the earth rotates, the moon’s gravitational force continually mounds the water and that fluid mound moves around the earth. The actual height of the tide is influenced by the shape of the coastline and depth of the water.