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Tuula Närhinen

Drop Tracer

Sound and video installation, 2011

70 soot-coated glass slides, 4 pigment prints enlarged from the glass slides, 105×155 cm, the Drop Tracer instrument with an unexposed soot coated glass slide, candle, matchbox, HD video [00:49:20, color, sound, loop]

The Drop Tracer includes 35mm glass slide frames sensitized with soot and exposed to rain, photographic enlargements of the splash patterns made by the raindrops, and a video which allows the audience to experience the duration of the splashes. Falling on the soot-coated slide, raindrops leave traces which remain visible even after the water has evaporated. A contact microphone catches the sound of the collision.

The work draws from a method devised by the meteorologist Vincent J. Schaefer for recording raindrops' collision with glass. When a drop of rain hits the glass surface, air trapped under the droplet lifts up tiny particles of soot that end up creating explosion patterns on the surface of the slide.

Project website

Leonardo Journal Article

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