the glass work
The Glass Work invites you to take a photograph of your surroundings and will immediately interpret the photo as a soundscape.
The Glass Work reads the colours in the images people send and interprets them as sounds played on six hand blown glass gongs.
The work was created in collaboration with young people from St Helens and reflects these collective journeys and encounters. It was inspired by looking out from the carpark on above Church Square and having the view curated by young people who knew it well. We almost got locked in the shopping centre on the way out!
It was envisaged that the work might one day return to the carpark, looking out over St Helens, serenading the town and singing its song.
The outline of the work matches the chimney at World Of Glass, somewhere everyone from St Helens knows! It leans forward with the architectural confidence of the town’s brutalist carparks. The sound and arrangement of the gongs is a development of work started with a group at the Perth Community Centre - they’re played using the insides of doorbells!
It’s the latest in a series of projects that explore how an audience can use technology and social media to contribute to and influence an artwork.
The Glass Work was jointly commissioned by FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), a digital arts organisation based in Liverpool and Heart of Glass. Heart of Glass commissions artists to produce art with the communities of St Helens.
The glass elements were designed in collaboration with and blown by Charlie Burke and Amy Skachill-Kelly from World Of Glass in St Helens.