Today I added the final pipes to finish the piece. I welded a screw in peg to keep the lower two pipes together and support the piece.

I finally got a slot in the metal workshop so I could complete my piece! Today I realised the piece may be top heavy and topple over when all put together. So I started welding pipes to secure the canisters before adding supporting pipes so that the weight wasn’t completely focused on the large white canister. I then used an epoxy to stick a bolt on to the smaller white cannister (which turned out to be plastic rather than metal- so I couldn’t weld it!) from which tomorrow I will add a few more pipes to finalise the sculpture.

Thinking about how to progress with my piece. Thinking about containment (pipes and shower curtain?) against the uncontrollable (sound emitted from the cannisters?) , proximity (close to the viewer), yet separateness (sheet acting as a barrier. This is all to encapsulate failed attempts at containment; containment of anxiety, containment of the pandemic, containment of hysteria, containment under an autocratic, failing(?) government etc.

The sculpture could be contained by a curtain which the viewer can just about see through- or perhaps opaque paynes of glass/windows or doors? There but hidden; allusive and obscure. It is at once both certain and unstable.

I recorded some sounds produced by (1) hitting the canisters to create an echo and (2) rolling the canisters to evoke a sense of weight and heaviness. I then edited the sounds by overlaying them, adding artificial additional echos, changing the pitch and making them reverb. These sounds, if I were to use them, would be played on repeat in the gallery space to produce a sense of all consuming disarray, confusion, and to hypnotise the viewer. Perhaps they could be played from a speaker placed inside one of the canisters- perhaps to produce more immediate and natural echos, to make the piece more menacing and enlivened. The repetition would infer an endlessness which aims to reflect how the current pandemic seems to be, itself, unending. Restrictions seem to be dragging on and hope is diminishing… Perhaps the sound could get louder towards the end of the display time- to emphasise a sense of panic and anxiety and produce similar feelings within the viewer themselves?

Unfortunately the araldite solution didn’t work- the mixture either wasn’t strong enough or I didn’t mix it properly! So today I went to N.01 to glue gun the canister to the metal plate. However, this too was not strong enough. I may have to, on the day of construction, glue the canister last minute on to the pipes- so that I use the weight of the cannisters and gravity to help hold it in place as well. In the meantime, I need to Cut another pipe to connect the two white canisters and will hopefully be able to book in to the metal workshop soon!