Water and Dreams

“Time drips drop by drop from natural clocks; the world that time animates is a melancholy that weeps.”
Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams

This sound installation is a reinterpretation of Gaston Bachelard’s essay Water and Dreams, inspired by his material poetics on water and contemplation. An excerpt from the book is dictated word for word by a network of ink drops, each fall of which is detected. A bag filled with ink gradually empties, as if the words were “flowing” from the book, or as if thoughts were slowly forming, tothe rhythm of the ink drops.

The installation was created using recycled materials from a hospital. An infusion bag is filled with diluted ink, which is distributed through tubes. Drops of ink fall from the end of each tube, placed high above glasses equipped with vibration sensors. The book is open to a selected passage, which the installation “reads” in a loop: each drop that falls triggers the reading of a word in the order of the text. Four speakers are arranged in a square around the installation, each connected to a glass: the diffusion of the words is spatialized according to the points where the drops fall.