Still Chime, 2021

Katalina Caliendo and Daniel Tomlinson, 48hr window installation piece, 132 Battersea Church Road SW11 3NA

Using the window as a both an exhibition space and a place for collecting material, this work traces the etymology of window to the ‘wind-eye’, and uses its counter part- the microphone—as the ‘wind-ear’, or wind-chime. Pervasive as an ornament of both function and novelty, the wind-chime is most often comprised of assembled elements of wood, metal or glass. Functions vary from the warding off of evil spirits, to the bringing of good fortune, to “making a tinkling sound in the draught, ” or the repurposing of materials for ad-hoc home projects. In this way the wind-chime— or wind-ear—is a bricolage of material posited in function to directly react to the wind in order to produce interesting and/or soothing tones.

In Still Chime, the wind-chime is re-thought as a listening ear. There is emphasis on duration of time before the production of sonicifications. The collage of sonic elements of chance are materialised by what the microphone records, with the output of sound reassembled and delayed, highlighting the significance of discontinuity in manifestations processes.

In Still Chime the window exhibition itself is the making process. The artwork, when shown in the exhibition context (in this case the window of the home), is a conduit to absorb rather than produce. The artwork is a receptor for the collection of workable material to be collaged into a composition after the exhibition. The microphone in this work is both visual artefact and tool. In Still Chime the process of collecting is highlighted as integral to arranging and composing. Here unintentionally and intent, for example the unexpected ‘wind’ and its relationship to chance with the wind-chime becomes the possibilities of sound in stillness.