Sound Portal

Jane was one of nine international artists invited by the Interessengemeinschaft der Galerien in Wiesbaden GbR to make new outdoor works for the 2014 biennial Wiesbaden Kunstsommer. The theme for this Kunstsommer is 'Brückenschlag' (building bridges or connecting one point with the other). The nine artists each represent a town twinned with Wiesbaden. Jane was representing Tunbridge Wells following her creation of the Eccentric Pub Opera which was commissioned by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in 2011 for The Opera House Pub. The 'Sound Portal' sound sculpture (co-fabricated with Mike Snarr) is a sinuous serpentine sound carrier seemingly channelling sounds from below the street. The trickle of underground rivers that emanates from the speaker horns interplays with human voices that utter watery cantations. Sounds that are both familiar and uncanny gently subvert the ambient street soundscape. The form of The Sound Portal hints at the mythical whilst referring to the canalised subterranean streams and spas of Wiesbaden and Tunbridge Wells and reconnects the audience's imagination with the water that daily flows invisibly beneath them.

The sound sculpture was installed in Schwalbacher Str., Wiesbaden from the begining of May until the end of July 2014, with accompanying works and soundtrack exhibited in the Kunsthaus.

To create the soundtrack Jane traced the path of two streams, from free flowing to underground and free flowing again across town West to East making hydrophonic recordings where she could access the water. She then worked with the Girls at Kinderzentrum, Wellritzhof and a one-off choir of Wiesbadeners at the Kunsthaus to create the vocal elements, using phonic interpretations of her hydrophonic water recordings as 'sound-not-language' to make a bridge between cultures.