Audio Pools and Saw by Diana Burgoyne, © 2008/2009

Audio Pools collects and replays sounds from four specific time periods during the day - night, dawn, dusk, and mid-day. There are four solar powered pools hanging in a maple tree. Each is trapped in a short cycle of time (midnight, dawn, etc.). The pools consist of multiple self-contained sound chips and speakers - fabricated using a unique style of handmade circuitry that is soldered on a backbone of bare copper ground wire and embedded in clear resin. Standing beside the maple tree, Saw uses people power to active a sound chip. Various means (including the direct intervention of the artists and garden volunteers) are used to attract listeners into working (as a sawyer) to power the sound circuitry.

Diana Burgoyne refers to herself as an electronic folk artist. Her performances and installations have been exhibited in Montreal, Toronto, New York, France, Holland, and Estonia. She was commissioned by Telus Science World to collaborate on a piece which was exhibited as part of Contraption Corner. She has been the artist in residence at the Surrey Art Gallery's Tech Lab, participated in SCANZ in New Zealand and has just finished working on a piece entitled "Audio Quilt" as artist in residence at the Roundhouse Community center. "Audio Quilt" is an interactive installation that reflects the sounds and voices of the Roundhouse community by utilizing one hundred audio chips, each recording 10 seconds of sound. She was awarded the 2009 Fleck Fellowship by the Banff center for the Arts and has taught a class entitled "Creative Electronics" at Emily Carr University of Art and Design since 1998.

Dawn.

Listeners trigger the sound playback by pinching the pennies together.

A cacophony .. all times of the day running simultaneously.

Night.

Saw seen from the backside. Movement of the red-handled saw back and forth triggers the sound of chain saws in the wilderness.

A sawyer at work.

Solar cells are hidden high up in the canopy of the maple tree. These power audio circuits for four times of the day. Pennies hang from the ciruits and act as simple switches to turn on each audio pool.