Wave/wave form choir II, 2018

Salt, video projection, speakers


Exhibition: Water and wave forms, Moonah Arts Centre





For Cath, water is the raw material for exploring the links between spaces of contemplation, liminal states and acoustics. Her multi-layered process begins with making field recordings of the sound of waves on the ocean beach, which she then subjects to various processes of translation and transformation. Moving through techniques of graphic notation, digital recording and improvisation, and finally a collaboration with a human choir, her work links the ephemeral qualities of water and the human voice to create a meditation on ‘how we imagine, remember, experience and have an innate understanding of the materiality of waves.’ Weaving between the sonic and temporal realms, Cath’s wave forms invite us into the ‘soft architecture’ (Brandon LaBelle) of acoustic space, asking us to immerse ourselves and attune our senses to the flux of resonance in water’s rhythmic and tonal range. The materiality of the shoreline is rendered on the floor in salt, the trace of a wave created by Cath over the last 2 days – in a confluence of light and sound waves, it ripples with the vibrations of voices on water.


I have come to see the [process] as filterings – a way of responding to the fluidity of water, to sift and reassemble material and conceptual elements and render clarity from chaos, recognise something knowable amidst the unknown. Through these filterings, the movement and sound of water is traced, and retraced,...patterns and rhythms have gradually become distanced from their origins, so that we find ourselves in a space where, rather than us catching a wave, it catches us. 


- Eliza Burke, opening night remarks, 2018

© Cath Robinson. Photographs: Peter Angus Robinson