Splits And Cracks let you dive inside a crackling slice of wood.

Heatwires are stitched inside a slice of wood. Applied electricity heats up the wire and causes moisture in the wood to reduce. The material tries to shrink, but cant because of its stiffness and causes the wood to break. During this process the wood produces splits and cracks, which is picked up by multiple microphones and made audible through a pair of speakers in front of the work.

During my research I spoke with many people about the phenomena of crackling wood. What all conversations had in common was, that everybody had very personal memories connected to those sounds and woodworkers know a multitude of ways how to avoid cracks in wooden materials.

With this work, I like the give my audience a multi-sensory-wood-crackling-experience, where a huge slice of a tree with cracks of all sizes cause detailed wood crackling sounds and meet the hidden scents of warm pine wood.