Words for Water
Integrated Public Art Work
Year - 2007
Client - City of Melton
Scope - Sketch design through to contract admin
Location - Caroline Springs, Victoria
Budget - $100,000
Team - CAStudios. Fabricators: DCG Design
A River Runs Through Us
Water is of fundamental importance to life on this planet. Every human society holds water to be one of the foundational principals of their culture. It is in our many varied languages, in our books, poems, stories, and day to day discourse that we pass this knowledge through the generations. This water talk constitutes a kind of ground water which flows through all our lives, shaping our relationships, informing our dreams and imaginings, sustaining life as we know it and underwriting our sense of global community.
In Australia the significance and importance of water has perhaps never been more acutely felt. This project seeks to generate a particularly local expression of the seemingly universal mytho-poetics of water.
The primary ambition of this project was to collate all the Words for Water, from every country, every language, every dialect, patois, Creole, and even slang. This listing was conceived of as being generated within and by a network of local and global communities. This is an immense and perhaps impossible task! However, to facilitate this project, an interactive web site (or Wiki) was established, and with the collaboration of local school children, their teachers, families and of friends around the world, a listing of some 160 words was achieved in a relatively short space of time.
Given that this collection is only a tiny fraction of the total language pool, particular attention has been given to ensure that firstly, all major language groups are fairly and proportionally represented, and secondly that local and regional indigenous languages are honoured. All words have been translated into English or given phonetic equivalents and written using the English alphabet. This act of translation, mindful of the inherent issues of colonialism and imperialism, of mistranslations, mishearings, misunderstandings, misspellings etc, has been undertaken in a spirit of openness, inclusiveness and friendship. All words listed, their spelling, language group and place of origin, have been checked using the available resources of the State Library of Victoria, the internet, and local native speakers.
Water Matrix
Once this list of Words for Water was compiled the next step of the project was to compose the language of water into a kind of crossword puzzle or matrix, legible in multiple directions and at various scales. This Water Matrix, a kind of textual aquifer uniting people in their common humanity, is envisaged of as flowing beneath the entire project site.
Water Shed
As this textual aquifer streams across the site, it pools, articulating an architectural ‘folly’ in the guise of a small house or oversized ‘shed’. This Water Shed, approximately 3600 x 2400 x 3600mm, emerges from a small vortex in the design plan, formed by the conjunction of pedestrian paths connecting the Library, Car Park and Sports Stadium. Literally made from Words for Water, Water Shed is at once ‘house’ and ‘boat’. Its’ form speaks both of the shelter and security of the physical home as well as of the home language affords us. However, upturned, Water Shed appears boat like, a fragile vessel in which we navigate our lives. Perhaps set adrift by some global disturbance, Water Shed seems to have run aground and the waters of the world withdrawn. Materially resilient and vulnerable, Water Shed awaits the return of the waters, registering the passage of time and inviting us to be mindful of water and, through water, of each other.
