Waterpower

Sound installation | 2024–2026

Waterpower is a sound work exploring the relationship between water, landscape and the industrial heritage of Malmesbury.

Commissioned for the Malmesbury River Festival in 2024, the piece brings together field recordings of the rivers around Malmesbury, capturing their wildlife and changing environments, with an original musical composition.

The river was recorded in a variety of conditions, from periods of flood to times of drought, revealing the contrasting character of water as both a life-giving presence and a powerful, sometimes destructive force.

The composition incorporates the unusual cymbelum, a Hungarian string instrument played with hammers. Its distinctive, percussive sound evokes the machinery and industry that the rivers of Malmesbury once powered. The music moves between moments of tranquillity and more dramatic, unsettling passages, reflecting the dual nature of water.

In the summers of 2025 and 2026, Waterpower was presented as an immersive outdoor sound installation in the courtyard at Caerbladon Gallery, Malmesbury. Played through four speakers, the sixteen-minute composition was triggered by a LiDAR sensor as visitors entered the space. A listening bench invited visitors to sit and experience the complete work, while a water sculpture at the centre of the courtyard reflected the sounds within the composition.

The work was subsequently presented at the Malmesbury Festival of Place in 2026.

Waterpower considers the enduring relationship between a town and its rivers, and the ways in which water continues to shape its landscape, history and identity.

Commissioned: Malmesbury River Festival, 2024.

Presented: Caerbladon Gallery, Malmesbury, 2025 and 2026; Malmesbury Festival of Place, 2026.

Duration: 16 minutes.