Tzu Ni Hung
It’s easy to mistake Tzu-Ni Hung’s resonance chambers for bowls with a hole in the bottom, but they are instruments that can be played with a bow, or components in speakers or sound installations. During her residency, the Taiwanese artist explored their different resonances, which depend on the thickness of the wall and the roundness of the rim, and recorded the sound of each piece before firing and after. She also captured the “noise” of the cooling ceramics, an intimate tingling like countless glass needles breaking, to be part of her auditory ecosystems. Hung not only uses the recordings in her own audio works, she also plans to include them in a sample pack for other sound artists she might collaborate with. Her experimental way of working with ceramics is rather a statement in Taiwan, where tradition is revered and anxiously guarded – mostly by men, of course.
Mirte van Laarhoven |1
Water, wind, sand, plants, trees, moss, insects, birds, all kinds of life are welcome to help shape nature in the Netherlands, if landscape architect and artist Mirte van Laarhoven has any say in the process. Her plans and proposals shift attention from engineering to self-sustaining environments, biotope creation and human experience.
At EKWC, she made a series of three large sculptures meant to be placed in a natural environment. “I can see the works emerge form the sand dunes, with some pioneer species growing on top of them.” Built with coiling and glazed with a 20-colour palette rich in iron-oxide, the sculptures were single-fired to reduce their CO2 footprint. Once installed, they will offer an opportunity for humans to take a rest and relate to the surrounding nature, and invite other forms of life to take up residence in the artwork, completing it with their presence.
Erno Langenberg |2
3D-printing with clay remains an experimental field, where Erno Langenberg feels right at home. Last October, he joined EKWC’s Sander Alblas to address a common problem in printing with normal clay pressed through a nozzle: you constantly need to change the cartridges. The solution? Use slip clay from a large container, add a substance to speed up coagulation – and start experimenting until you get it right. Erno also investigated ways to print with locally sourced clay that doesn’t have the consistent qualities of industrial clay bodies, by incorporating things like different shrinkage and deformation into the design of his building elements.
