Driver, 2026
PLA, concrete, PVA, water, MP3 file, speaker
16 x 19 x 19 cm
Driver (2026) is a sound work embedded within a 3D printed sculpture covered in concrete. The work continues Bob Bicknell-Knight’s interest in time, control and decay, and more specifically reflects on issues of resource extraction.
The sculptural element of the work resembles a bunker, or a simple architectural structure that one might find in an industrial environment, complete with a hole that would operate as a door and a slightly domed roof. The looping sound, a melodic thunk, could be the distorted sound of a clock, but in reality is a rough recording made by Bicknell-Knight of a pile driver, a heavy-duty piece of machinery, being repeatedly driven into the ground. They are typically used to hammer long, structural columns made of steel, concrete, or wood deep into the earth, supporting the weight of heavy objects.
This particular pile driver was recorded in early 2026 whilst Bicknell-Knight was on a walk near Sizewell, UK, a small town near his family home. The columns being hammered into the ground are the foundations for a new nuclear power station, Sizewell C, the third nuclear power station to be developed in the area and one of the largest in the UK. The sound of the pile driver echoes across the landscape, and has been said to do so on a regular basis throughout 2026.
Driver attempts to grapple with how the world is in an ongoing state of climate emergency, trapped between contending ideas of continuous technological evolution and living within a state of pre-apocalypse, with the sound of a pile driver being a stand-in for the artist’s own version of the doomsday clock, continuously counting down to an increasingly worrying future.
Driver has been included in the following exhibitions:
– Real-Time, curated by Petia Mihaylova. At Cable Depot, Sofia, BG, 4th – 30th July 2026.