News

Resonance

Article released: Monday, 07 September, 2009

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If you happen by the COFA campus in the next couple of weeks you will see a 20meter long word spelled out with coal on the grass strip outside of the sculpture department. The artwork, which was created by Sylvia Ross, the Head of the School of Art at COFA, is made from one tonne of coal and spells out the word Resonance. 
“The artwork is not a political piece regarding the use of coal, its’ more of a prompt for people to think about the over reliance on the use of coal and about waste. Whatever you do has a consequence- it resonates“ explains Ross.
The artwork needed one tonne of coal to complete all the lettering. One tonne of coal is the unit measure when often referring to certain green house emissions. It takes one tonne of coal to generate an average of 2500 kWh of electricity, the equivalent of powering an average Australian household for 4 months. In environmental terms, 1 kWh of electricity generated at a coal fired power station releases around 1 kg of Carbon-Dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, 2500 kWh generates 2500 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. Over 90% of the electricity generated in NSW is derived from coal.
The placement of the artwork is also not a matter of chance, because in early Colonial times the grass strip outside the COFA sculpture department was on of the outlets of a waterway called Busby’s Bore.
Busby’s Bore, named after John Busby who in 1826 recommended that the then Lachlan Swamps (now Centennial Park), where Sydney was drawing most of its water from with carts after the Tank Stream became quite putrid, be delivered to a reservoir at the then Racecourse (today’s Hyde Park) via a bore. The 3.5 kilometre convict built sandstone bore is still underground today, and is protected by a Permanent Conservation Order.


The COFA Campus is open to the public on Saturday the 19th of September for our annual Spring Fair.
Please come down and visit us and check out Resonance.

For more information on how to get to the COFA campus please visit: http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/about/location

For more information on the Spring Fair, please visit:  http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/newsevents/events/event_0298.html