PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK PIKETHALL
Top to bottom: Water tower; CD Sea installation. Made from 600,000 compact discs laid out by 140 helpers.
“The field at Long Knoll has a public foot path through it. It’s an integral part of the design,” Munro says. “I love the idea that people can walk through the middle of a sea. The sea makes adults become like children; walking across the sea is every child’s fantasy. Unplanned, two sides of CDSea are wobbly, two straight. The start line for laying out discs was the same, so that side of the installation was straight, but helpers worked at different speeds, came and went, and moved from spot to spot. Helpers also began to work in two directions, so two sides, those where they finished, had irregular edges, an unexpected result that delighted Munro. “The irregular edge is one of those lucky occurrences, it just happens to look like a tidal line on a beach,” the artist says. “One has to be pragmatic about these sort of things. Laying down rules often stunts the result. I am a great believer in letting things take their own course, with a gentle nudge here and there.” Helpers shaped the sea in another way, too. Some of us laid CDs in straight lines, adopting Asian, rice planter-style positions of legs apart, bending down and planting the crop as quickly as possible, because we knew time was limited. But most planters sat on the grass and placed their CDs slowly, carefully, while chatting, making sure the spacing between discs was just so – not overlapping, nor revealing too much grass between them. To make sure the spacing between CDs was just right, some would stand up and dip a toe into the “sea”, to carefully nudge a disc this way or that. From a distance, it looked like they
54
identity [interior/design/property]