SOURCE

Kevin Sanderson Beecher & Jess Franklin

Vaults

4 June - 27 June 2026

In collaboration with The Fold, art and geology research group

 

Artist talk as part of The Fold Symposium, Saturday 04 July, 3pm

A grain of sand begins as a fragment, separated from its source rock, it is carried by wind and water and shaped by many processes. Transforming, it moves through landscapes, gathering traces of its journey. In time, it settles. Grains settle. Layers form. What was once scattered is whole, held deep within the earth, and part of a larger, shifting landscape. 

Source is an immersive sound installation, inspired by the research of former geologist Dr. Jess Franklin. Her PhD work investigated the provenance of ancient sandstones, unravelling the history of their individual sand grains, from weathering through to transport, deposition, and burial. Developed in collaboration with sound artist Kevin Sanderson Beecher, Source echoes the enormity of geological time. Using field recordings and sound manipulation, the soundscape serves as a sonic narrative that follows the long journey of sand grains through the sandstone’s life cycle. 

Upon entering a darkened room, attendees are immersed in an evocative soundscape and presented with an illuminated sample of sandstone resting on a plinth. The grains of sand within the rock are over 200 million years old. They were once part of mountains that no longer exist. They traversed hundreds of kilometers before arriving at their final resting place. The simultaneously erosive and cumulative nature of this journey serves to reflect the shifting inner and outer landscapes of our own lives as humans. Through our own materiality, we weather through time, becoming contoured, curved, and cracked. Over the course of our lifetime, layers of individual and collective experience build up to form the narrative of our life’s journey. 

Slow down. Listen. Return to source. 

Kevin Sanderson is an experimental sound artist and programmer based in Cork, Ireland. His practice is rooted in a reciprocal relationship between internal and external states of awareness through deep listening, field recording, and improvisation, serving as a continuous flow between himself and the natural world. Using this connection as a catalyst for his work, he deconstructs and recontextualises source material into imagined soundscapes and live performances. In addition to his soundscape compositions and performances, Kevin develops digital performance instruments, hardware controllers, and algorithmic compositions using MaxMSP, SuperCollider, and CSound, fusing his creative practice with a diverse technical background. He is a standing committee member for a newly emerging art-science collective The Fold  in Cork that connects artists with geology through focus groups, knowledge sharing workshops, and field trips. Kevin completed an MA in Experimental Sound Practice at University College Cork in 2025. 

Jess Franklin is a former geologist and the founder of The Fold, Ireland’s first art and geology group. The Fold is a cross-disciplinary research group that brings together artists and geologists to explore geology as a source of inspiration for creative practice through inquiry, dialogue, and embodied engagement with the natural world. Jess completed a PhD in Geology in 2019 and worked as a public engagement manager with Ireland’s Fossil Heritage at University College Cork from 2021 to 2025, frequently collaborating with the arts. She is currently the Communications and Development Support Manager at Backwater Artists Group.