Georg Tremmel, Shiho Fukuhara, Yousuke Nagao: Sourcing Water

Title:

Sourcing Water

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Exhibiting Artist(s):

Symposium:

ISEA2008: 14th International Symposium on Electronic Art

Venue(s):

National Museum of Singapore , Singapore , Singapore

Artist Statement:

Water in Singapore can never be taken for granted. Most of it is brought into the country from Malaysia, but the city-state is always looking for ways to produce its own supplies, with reverse osmosis being the most recent method. As a metaphor of this ongoing ‘search for water’, the artists are sourcing for water across Singapore using an ancient, albeit completely un-scientific technique. Dowsing is the practice of using a flexible rod to ‘divine’ the location of water underground. It was believed that the dowsing rods acts as an amplifier of the body’s ‘natural’ sensing of underground water.

As a fusion of body, instrument and landscape, dowsing was a pre-scientific form of location-positioning technology, and – for the artwork – the artists tried to combine this age old ‘technology’ with modern sensing methods. The dowsing rods were enhanced with GPS and Motion Sensors, allowing data to be collected, correlated and juxtaposed to hard scientific water data to create a map of potential water sources. And if all goes well, we could end up with ‘new’ newater!