Henri Papin’s Faraday Sled is a campaign sled with no intent on exploration. It offers temporary shelter from the encroaching electromagnetic noise of the world. A defensive architecture, an anechoic chamber which excludes all but very specific listening. Everything external is blocked, and from inside this protected cage, an empty signal is broadcast, producing a thin wave of silence amongst the mass. It blocks a nearby local religious radio station at 87.6 FM.

A circuit of barely recognisable technology sits perched inside a glass vessel, surrounded by a dozen or so compasses which follow a moving magnet with the intensity of a sunflowers’ gaze following the sun. Objects are stuffed wherever they can be stuffed. Copper pipe forms an antenna or a counterpoise to this oddly resonant circuit-of-things. Hard to tell, it all sits perched and embedded into a shopping trolley.

Surrounding this, receptive tentacles of copper cable connect to capacitor plates and to two energy centres which reproduce images of the first tesla coil test ever performed. They delight in the showers of induced electricity flying around the room, breaking the dielectric of the air itself over and over again, looking for purchase. Tesla himself sits amongst the deluge of sparks in a tongue-in-cheek in-camera superimposition. There is something of an altar, something of the strategic arrangement of the itinerant. How does one maintain a connection to ground when one cannot physically remain?

The trolley sits in this space, anchored into position with thick copper rods and copper plates, conductive and searching. Searching for the sounds of the universe. The groans and sighs of a planet world-weary with matter. Papin’s Sled is a device for circumnavigating everything known, in favour of speculative exploration. Looking for alternatives, for clues we overlooked on the journey of our technological advancement. It uses the ground circuit to exchange the complexity of human-ness for the simplicity of being.

It projects silence into the mass of casually discarded broadcasts. A moment to reflect without exterior influence. It is a gesture, more than anything, about providing space. Where McIntyre’s reconstruction pays homage to the plucky sea bird skirting extinction, Papin’s Sled hunts for isolation while attempting to shield the earth from actions which have led us to this overwhelming place in time. What they share perhaps, is a caution about coming in to land, and an exaltation of quietness.

Tricky Walsh

Tricky Walsh