Immersive Watergrove by Sophie Cooper and Babs Smith: The destination and the journey

Mollie Balshaw 

Artist, writer and director of Short Supply, Mollie Balshaw reviews a site specific outdoor installation and augmented reality project by Babs Smith and Sophie Cooper which took place between 12 August and 3 September 2023 at Watergrove Reservoir and Frank Gallery, Littleborough.  Online at https://immersivewatergroveblog.wordpress.com/ the project had around 2000 views and extended to the Gallery in the form of VR, architectural sound, found objects, prints, and 3D printed coral. It has prompted local council and The Culture Coop Rochdale to support a second exhibition at another reservoir in Heywood, Rochdale. Babs Smith is a regular contributor to Short Supply shows, and studied at the University of Salford with Mollie Balshaw. The project is the debut collaboration of Babs and Sophie Cooper. The work can be seen at Paradise Works The Alumni Strikes Back until 15th October:

https://www.paradise-works.com/exhibitions-landing 

I saw a tweet recently that read “hey sorry I missed your text, I am processing a non-stop 24/7 onslaught of information with a brain designed to eat berries in a cave” (Janel Comeau, @VeryBadLlama). It got me thinking. 

As of 2022, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 151 minutes per day. According to recent estimates, approximately 95 million photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram daily, and each of us takes an average of 22 images a day (Statista, 2022). With those figures, visibility as an artist is an ever changing and expanding landscape. The mainstream onset of AI art and debates around that have eclipsed the NFT discussion of 2022 and Meta’s failed pilot of the Metaverse briefly restored some hope for the ‘real world’. Online, we are offered the opportunity to simultaneously be visible and invisible, globally and publicly, on a planet which is in crisis. With all this in mind, perhaps you, like me, are feeling the urge to run for the hills, wiggle your toes in some grass and put the existential crisis to bed for another day. You can imagine my delight recently when I was given an invitation to do just that. 

‘Immersive Watergrove’, an outdoor, site specific work exploring themes of climate change, water usage, local history and new technology by Sophie Cooper and Babs Smith, reckoned with all this and more, planting a hopeful digital presence in the landscape of Rochdale, and meaningfully encouraging a truly slow engagement with contemporary art. 

This project is the debut collaboration between Cooper and Smith. Babs Smith’s visual art is concerned with the translation of visceral human experiences as a means of deepening our understanding of the Anthropocene (the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment). She works with both physical and virtual materials to extract something that she knows exists in a sculptural form. Sophie Cooper is a sound artist whose practice pivots around new presentations of acoustic instrumentation (primarily the trombone) with electronics, challenging conventions around composition, text placement and performance. 

This collaboration is a match made in heaven which comes through in the work itself; it’s considered, clear and full of rich context for those wishing to dig a little deeper. It’s an expansive and complex project over 12 months in the making, and beyond the mechanics of collaboration, months of research and dedication these artists have shown to this project’s theme, I’d like to convey how it made me feel as a visitor, and why this gentle work made me feel hopeful in an art world that often feels all consuming.

Before I dig in, it’s worth noting that although this project took place over two locations –Watergrove Reservoir and an accompanying exhibition at Gallery Frank in Littleborough – I’ll be concentrating on the site specific works at the reservoir here. This is the heart of the project, where context and content coalesce, though documentation of the exhibition can be found at https://immersivewatergroveblog.wordpress.com/immersive-watergrove/. 

The village of Watergrove was flooded in the 1930s when the decision was made to create a large reservoir to supply Rochdale with drinking water. The springboard for this project is an aim to highlight the very real and visual effects of climate change on the area’s water supply, inspired by the reappearance of the former community’s remnants during the drought of 2022. This prompted the creation of four points around the reservoir which engage visitors with augmented reality images and sound highlighting four topics associated with each location.

I’m on the phone with Babs navigating the grounds at Watergrove Reservoir, and she tells me about the four points where hers and Sophie's interactive images can be found. The first image I come across is Wave Wall (2023). Each image is propped up by a distinct post and frame, made with reclaimed wood from the area by Alex Jako, a friend of the artists in neighbouring Todmorden. Using an app called Artivive which activates the animation and sound, Wave Wall starts to ripple and blare with horn music. The image resembles a portal, a transparent dome with a likeness of the Eden Project. This point remembers the importance of brass bands to the community, combining an old recording of the last band’s march through the village with a slowly sinking watery melody, interpreted as a vortex of time. This is not my first time interacting with one of Babs’s augmented reality works, but it’s unmissable how much the sound brings this piece to life. The image piqued my curiosity and the sound drew me in, giving the animation new life, and taking me to a bygone time when the now simple technology in my hand, was unimaginable. 

“You’ve got a bit of a walk before the next one” Babs tells me “It’s about twenty-five to thirty minutes. Just follow the path around”. If this was the city centre, a rumbly stomach would have me tapping out of this walk. As I’m making my way over to the next point, I think about the relationship contemporary art has with urban life. The rush, get up and go, crash of traffic and bustle of people dashing past you with a sandwich they have ten minutes to eat on the go. Being surrounded by this energy can be motivating and exciting, but this urgency can also motivate us to cut corners, and increasingly unreliable public transport nationwide (which was already disproportionately affected in the north) means that thirty minute journey oftentimes might just not feel worth it.

There’s something to be said for how a rural setting can change your perspective of time. From June-September 2023, Liverpool Biennial took over the city once again, with one of its leading venues the Tobacco Warehouse a forty minute walk from Liverpool Lime Street train station. While I admire the choice, as interesting a location as it is steeped in local relevance and pegged for redevelopment, I favoured a lift in the car over the walk. Within this context, art becomes something to be ticked off a list, and in my grumpier moments, it takes the magic away a little bit. 

By contrast, there’s something rewarding about walking through the reservoir on a scavenger hunt. Finding the following point prompted a little excited jump for joy, I have to be honest. Marl’d Earth (2023) is haunting, perched right by the water’s edge punctuated by the mild ripples. This point is more spiritual, inspired by Babs’s experience of standing in the void of the reservoir back in the drought of 2022. She tells me she felt deeply the presence of the existence of the people in the drowned village, and the work mirrors the ominous, meditative state she felt in that moment. The sound piece could be something out of a dystopian Hollywood thriller, packed with intensity, sensitivity and momentous string instruments. The computer generated image illustrates spiritual movement over the cracked earth, strands hovering in mid-air have a life of their own, as if tracking the movement of a forest creature. There’s nothing in the distance. It’s an other-worldly image. 

My last point - which Babs tells me was meant to be the first (I’ve never been great at following instruction) is named The Mothers (2023) titled as a tribute to the women of the Church who carried food from the nearby village of Wardle so that they could stay on for the evening service. This overlooks the reservoir and the landscape of Rochdale. You can’t help but be taken in by it. Sophie sings in this piece, and it’s exciting for me to recentre and get a closer insight into her work and ideas within this collaboration, as this is my first time experiencing her work. As an experimental musician, Sophie’s work is deeply embedded in significance and knowledge of this part of the world. The reason for the four points spread across the reservoir is largely down to Sophie, who’s interest as a musician is driven by a desire to encourage marginalised people to engage with music. She was similarly keen to get people walking around the reservoir who wouldn’t normally visit it. The Mothers song rings out almost like a sea shanty for the hills, or a nursery rhyme for the spirit of Watergrove Village. 

Babs tells me in the exhibition space later on that she wanted this “white space” to connect with the site specific work to encourage new audiences to visit the gallery too. “This space is theirs, it's for them to use, and I wanted this work to invite that”. There’s a large augmented reality billboard on the side of Ebor Studios (host to Gallery Frank) just to make the link even more clear. 

Throughout this piece is the evidence of a balanced and dynamic collaboration not just between the artists, but also local community groups and the organisations supporting the project. Even United Utilities had an involved role, encouraging transparency around where the water in the reservoir came from and connecting its current presence with local history. 

This recognition of one another’s strengths, slow investigation and genuine passion for histories that we can share through the new technologies available to us, is what gives me hope for the art world. I want more art that embraces this non-urgency, that has a rewarding destination and  journey. That doesn’t say no to new ways of making art, and simply asks “how can we make this work together?” 

‘Immersive Watergrove’ is a simple idea, delivered to the highest quality. The care and attention to detail should be enviable for any collaborative counterparts in urban settings in the north, and the rest of the UK.