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We're making a bell using the Portland Roach Stone because of the fossils that are in it.
So that on the surface of the bell cast, all the detail of these fossils will then be in the surface of the metal.
So in a sense we're giving life to these fossils from 135 million years ago.
What is negatives now becomes positives.
The bell that will come out of this is going to look quite geological.
It's going to be encrusted with fossils.
It's going to look like it's been dredged up from the bottom of the sea or from a different age.
And the reason that's kind of interesting is because that's what the scientists are saying is happening now.
We are in a period of extinction on geological scales.
The bell is an ancient communication device and has been remodeled through the centuries and by different cultures to express different things.
For the memo project we had to come up with a new bell sound to respond to the complexity of the issues that are raised as we become more aware about extinction and the influences that it's going to have on our lives.
It's hard to hear pops on a rainy day here in Devon but these forms were an experiment of just playing with some shapes in order to get some ideas that we could then take to the computer and work out with the programs that analyse frequency vibration in order to model a new sound for the memo bell.
There were many problems associated with casting in this stone.
The stone changes, it starts to melt at about 1000 degrees and that's about the temperature that the metal goes in.
We're also concerned about the gases that would be released in that process so there are many holes drilled into the rock and sort of honeycombed with vents to allow the gases that accumulated in the stone to vent off so we didn't have a volcano.
It's been sitting in the ground for a week now so that the metal very, very, very slowly cools down and this is a traditional technique for bells. It's believed to make a better ring.
That was pretty flat to a sound.
It reverberates nicely doesn't it? It's got all that skank on it and it's got a strap around it.
Bells talk in celebration and they talk in loss. This new bell form is to create a sound that in some way connects with the theme of the memo project of extinction.
Robert Hook coined the phrase extinction when looking at this stone when measuring up after the fire of London for the rebuilding.
It was while seeing these fossils that he first realized that something had existed before us, incorporating that in an object, acknowledging both our awareness of where we have come from, what is happening now and what the possible options for us may be in the future.
The bell within the memo project will be the living speaking part of that thought.
So now we get to hear the Robert Hook bell around 20 times for Rio 20.
The bell in the memo project will be the living speaking part of that thought.
Thank you for watching.
