Wassersäule

Site-specific sound installation for Domenig Steinhaus' water reservoir

Feedback circuit in the Steinhaus' water reservoir: glass cylinder, four microphones, four transducers, electronics. From the exhibition booklet (2025):

The Spiral Room in Domenig Steinhaus is built around a glass cylinder that connects directly to the aquifer beside the house. The cylinder is set below the groundwater level so that, when a valve is opened, water flows in. Due to a recent flood, the valve is now mostly kept closed and the cylinder remains empty. In the absence of water, the cylinder is a lucid resonant body, pierced only by a small aperture at its upper end. When I first visited the Steinhaus, I leaned over and placed my ear against that opening. I heard complex resonances and echoes: long and harmonious, at once distant and solitary. I wondered how it would feel to be inside there, where hearing is muffled by the hollow geometry of the cylinder and sight is blurred by the layered transparencies of glass. Since I could not enter the cylinder myself, I lowered four small microphones through the aperture on top, letting them reach the space where my ears could not. I connected them to the surrounding glass and metal structure, so the echoes within could drift outward. Now, the resonances of the absent water flow back into the house, suspended between the inside and the outside of the Spiral Room.

Wassersäule was part of the exhibition A House of Simultaneous Arrivals at Domenig Steinhaus.