In Memorium Dr. Ingrid Wengler 2023

In Memorium Dr. Ingrid Wengler is a site-specific sound installation, that re-animates the decaying and abandoned ship Dr. Ingrid Wengler, located in the Spree river in Berlin. In order to access the boat, one must paddle out to it via kayak or other means and climb aboard. As you paddle closer to my installation on the boat, the percussive sounds of typewriters and announcements grow louder emanating from inside - sounds you would expect to hear from a bureaucratic hell scape, not a boat. But these sounds directly reference the history that lead to the Wengler’s demise - a web of rules and regulations.

On the inside of the boat are sculptures I built from rusted metal and decaying wood from the site. The sounds playing through speakers mounted on the sculptures are field recordings I made on the boat. The sounds are amplified through a circuit made from wire electrical wire also salvaged from the ship, in order to tie the sonic manifestations of the boat to it physically.

Audio and videos below. One set of speakers plays field recordings on the inside on the boat. The pair mounted on the bow emit a slowly changing high pitched sine wave to create a spatial composition for kayakers in the water.