Upon the Seas to which It Eventually Flows
Stuart Blake Jones · University of the Arts London Research Online (University of the Arts London) · 2002
The Biosphere, built by Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao as the US pavilion at Expo ’67, is the largest existent geodesic dome. Currently housing a research centre and museum dedicated to the study of water use and conservation, it remains an iconic building. It is much visited by a wide audience, ranging from academics and researchers, through tourists to schoolchildren. I was invited to research and develop an audio installation to enhance, and stimulate interest in the garden in the centre of the structure. My intention was to bring together, in a poetic dialogue, aspects of Buckminster Fuller’s thought and our relationship to and dependency on water; it also furthered my own investigations into the relationship of sound to space, and how the former can reframe our perception of the latter. I used the sounds of voices speaking Fuller texts in 14 languages and recordings of water I had made worldwide; the voice sounds were treated so that they ‘dissolved’ into the water, and the sounds were dispersed in the garden over 12 channels, with the position and movement of sounds mapped according to Fuller’s dymaxion principles. The installation, while being an art object in its own right, reveals the range and relevance of Fuller’s thought by contextualising the poetics and informatics of his world vision within linguistic and locational referencing, concentrated into a specific physical and aural space, creating an aural structure based on his design principles.