|1. Sound mirror, charcoal|
|2. Sound mirror, charcoal|
|3. Sound mirror, charcoal|
|4. Sound mirror, charcoal|
The quick charcoal studies above are of the sound mirrors based in Kent. (For more information please see below). I plan to complete a series of drawings and then take a selected few and rework them through the etching process. Two or three larger charcoal drawings will be completed next week to start to understand the tone and form of the mirrors. The images will then start to take on a life of their own and inform how I can use line, aquatint and mark making for a final print.
Information on The sound mirrors;
Prior to World War II and the invention of radar, acoustic mirrors were built as early warning devices around the coasts of Great Britain, with the aim of detecting incoming enemy aircraft by the sound of their engines. The most famous of these devices still stand at Denge on the Dungeness peninsula and at Hythe in Kent.
The Dungeness mirrors consist of three large concrete reflectors built in the 1920s–1930s. Their experimental nature is evident by the different shapes of each of the three reflectors: one is a long, curved wall about 5 m high by 70 m long, while the other two are dish-shaped constructions approximately 4–5 m in diameter.
The mirrors fit well with my interest in man made objects and forms. An increasing area of interest is also how the technology that was cutting edge soon becomes defunct and redundant and super seeded by something else.