ripples
Your secret is safe with the canal!
Commissioned by Super Slow Way for Burnley Canal Festival, The Ripples invited visitors to speak into a tube. The secrets and stories they told were then interpreted as bubbles and ripples on the surface of the canal.
Although the secret can be seen and each one looks different, there's no way of knowing what was said. Instead the energy created by the ripples is stored in the canal and passed along its length to Liverpool and Leeds.
An engaging object in its own right, the artwork is also envisaged as something that could be permanently installed and become part of the creative infrastructure of the area - something that could be taken over by different groups and adapted to integrate within a performance or cultural activity.
Once a key transport route, the canal now carries fibre optic cables and is so once again an important communications link. The artwork invites us to consider how we see data and where we send it. Who can see it? Are we sure that we retain access to it?
The work would not have been in place without the huge efforts of Jennifer Chung and Matthew Swarbrick. Huge thanks to them!
