On a sunny Saturday afternoon, May 5th, Dovetailed UX in partnership with Commission Projects and Homerton College joined forces to celebrate the opening of a new sculpture in Homerton Gardens. Created by Harry Gray, the work “Spiral and Compass” symbolises an earlier time in the Homerton community when Rattee and Kett, a wood and stone masonry studio, were still active.
To celebrate “Spiral and Compass”, Dovetailed created an interactive temporary installation of our own. In order to compliment the visual quality of the sculpture we decided to use sound for our own installation as a fun and interactive way to engage the surrounding community in public art.
We arrived at Homerton Gardens with 6 weighted posts and a number of small recording devices. The colour of the posts and recording buttons corresponded with specific tasks or questions for participants to complete.
Participants recorded 10-second sound clips on prompted topics such as their relation to the Homerton community and their opinions on the sculpture and attached the recording buttons to weighted posts.
We then encouraged participants to listen to the recordings and hear back what others had to say about “Spiral and Compass” in an effort to inspire dialogue about the art pieces and about the community.
All in all, small children, older adults and everybody in between enjoyed creating and sharing their sound art with others. In unison with other events, such as a beautifully choreographed dance, and the ability to learn stone carving and sculpting ourselves, we thoroughly enjoyed our time at Homerton Gardens celebrating public art for all.