Caroline Locke

Studio A11

UK based interdisciplinary artist and educator Caroline Locke is renowned for her sound sculptures and large-scale immersive installations. Working with water, sculptural devices, new and old technology, sound, video and live elements, Locke makes works that are often sited in public spaces as well as in galleries and performance venues. 

Influenced by the scientific theory that all things vibrate, Locke began experimenting with making particular frequencies visible using cymatics – the sending of sound through water in order to visualise it. Live performances where musicians revealed the sight of the sound of their instruments followed and large scale immersive environments where audiences interacted and triggered soundscapes sent through the water came later. 

Caroline uses tools and inventions to capture the imagination and to reveal the magic in our natural world. Her work has been attuned to natural ecologies for many years. She has explored water and its natural circulatory systems, made works in connection to gravity, the sea and the internal body. Caroline works with data and seeks interesting ways to use it within her artworks and installations. More recently Locke has been collecting data from trees and the human body, whilst exploring ways to relate this data to sound. She is also activating publicly engaged projects, working closely with people and communities.

Caroline is currently exploring ways to allow data to perform within fully immersive environments. This research extends her Arts Council Funded projects which use data to trigger kinetic sculptural elements with links to climate change and the human body. 

Locke continues to develop her Significant Tree and Tree Carter Bell projects in connection with The Woodland Trust, The National Trust and Taylor Bells, Loughborough. A Bell is cast and rung as part of tree planting ceremonies across the country. She aims to plant 100 trees each year for as long as possible as part of this publicly engaged project. She has been connecting projects with research from The Scott Polar Institute and in early 2020 worked in Norway to record the sound of ice melting in an Arctic lake.

The book The Frequency of Trees has recently been published by Yorkshire Sculpture Park. 

The sound sculpture The Frequency of Trees (2014 – present) is part of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park Open Air Collection.

Caroline is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at The Digital and Material Artistic Research Centre at The University of Derby.