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Silos was a sound installation developed for A Weekend at Hotel Palenque, an exhibition by OSR Projects at Arnolfini (July 2023) exploring ideas of entropy, rurality and the overlooked landscape.

The work emerged from our traces in the landscape and an interest in the vernacular architecture of the countryside, particularly the corrugated tin barns (locally referred to as known as ‘wriggly tin’), silos and agricultural buildings that populate the rural landscape. These structures exist in a continual cycle of repair, decay and adaptation, their surfaces shaped by weather, use and time. I became interested in them as sculptural forms: physical traces of our relationship with the land that speak of labour, production and habitation while simultaneously being reclaimed by the environments in which they stand.

The installation consisted of ten sculptural silos, each functioning as an individual loudspeaker. Together they produced a ten-channel soundscape composed from field recordings gathered across the rural landscape. Sounds of birdsong, the weather, wildlife, machinery and agricultural activity were distributed throughout the installation, filling the space with layers of sound that rumbled through the structures and resonated within the gallery. The silos became both image and instrument, acting as vessels through which the landscape could be experienced sonically.

Listening formed the central methodology of the work. Through field recording and close attention to place, Silos sought to engage with the landscape beyond its visual appearance, revealing the subtle relationships between built structures, ecological processes and human activity. The work invited audiences to consider human activity within environmental systems, and our part continually shaping and evolving our landscapes.

By transforming familiar agricultural forms into sounding bodies, Silos explored how listening can offer a deeper understanding of place and reveal the beauty, complexity and continual becoming of the rural landscape.