GILES SHEPHERD




Waist–Land
January 2025 

A study of a tunnel near where I grew up in South Africa. This project proposes a new mode of interaction with space. Broadly, I have understood the tunnel as a key, unique public place in a broader context of public space in post-Apartheid South Africa. I unpack this understanding of in a booklet, as well as start to suggest some practices for what I define as transformational interactions with place.

With the publication is a screen printed poster outlining the ways in which specific histories have influenced the tunnel and how they are still felt in the tunnel.

Exhibiting the findings of this work using cast limestone reproductions of the tunnels texture, inviting the audience to touch and listen to the blocks. I used a series of Piezo sensors to alternately detect and amplify the touch of one block through the other. I made headphones using the same sensors inverted as speakers to play a voice over recorded on the sensors as microphones to track a video outline the person–place interaction I have come to understand. The video was live distorted changing depending on the intensity of the touch on the textured block. This exhibition piece outlines the interconnectedness of person–place and present–past through the tunnels structure of simultaneous inputs and outputs.