Our current solution to nuclear and radioactive waste is to bury it deep underground, encased in rock salt tunnels.
The timescales required for this waste to become safe are measured in millennia. What happens to this waste when language and signs lose their meaning, and the last human to remember it is gone?
This installation uses a laser to engrave a poetic text on a phosphorescent screen, which performs its own half-life as it fades. These texts are overlaid on maps of sites in Cumbria and Lincolnshire, currently under consideration as sites for future nuclear waste burial.
This physical computing installation was first shown in December 2021 at London College of Communication, as part of “Visceral Realities”, the MA Interaction Design degree show. It continues my research into the uncanny materialities of energy sources, sound and eerie geographies.
I modified and 3D-printed an open source plotter, controlled with a combination of a self-written script and an open source gcode streamer. The plotter alternates between drawing maps and texts, a sequence that runs for two hours.
An accompanying spoken word piece played in a loop running for two minutes. This soundtrack incorporated field recordings from Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in Kent, and the former Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Orford Ness, Suffolk. An alternate video of the full text reading is shown below.
Materials: Plotter, laser, electronics, computer, speaker, mounted on wooden cabinet
Dimensions: 750mm x 1200mm x 100mm
#physicalcomputing #code #laser