A chiming ladle’s enduring past

Amongst a depository of smeltering equipment near the base of a blast furnace, rests a several meters wide, solid steel ladle. This historical artifact is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Erzgebirge​/​Krušnohoří Mining Region, a site that houses the oldest still working smelter in a region that produced silver, uranium, copper, lead ore, and other resources. A modified seismic measuring device listens through the rusty outer layer of the ladle into the heterogeneous chemistry of the former sulphur arsenic factory.

Anchored at a distance, we hear near indistinguishable conversations flow merging curiosity, excitement and disgust with playful pessimism in its intonational curves. Leaving no surface unquestioned, the Ghost Mines research studio haunts this site as much as the ambiguity of the mining region hunts them. All jokes aside, if it’s one thing that lasts, it is the level of endurance and messiness that was created here over decades, that is either dispersed by gusts of wind to be inhaled and carried onwards, or seeping into the earth surfaces, moving within water bodies until it meets even larger concentrations of eternal anthropogenic spills. Ants are fast pacing the steel flooring while remains of bee hives and wasp nests fell flat on the ground of the second floor of the old smelter, from where once coal and coke—pre-burned coal with a larger surface area that can reach 2/300 degrees more—was poured into the blast furnace.

We were told that since the use of new technologies from Britain in 1840, air pollution was so severe it killed insects, animals, and crops. In order to avoid decades of compensation, the state played a trick on the farmers, buying up their properties and selling them cheap with a contract to avoid future lawsuits. Only the Duke, who complained about his hunting forest loosing its leafs, could move the industry to improve air quality.

We were told workers were kept in check through blood tests and transferred “in time” to other sections of the industry to avoid overly exposure. Supposedly, only those working with arsenic were kept isolated as apparently it is addictive. It is of no surprise many suffered from deceases despite efforts to control them.

Today, the old sulphur and arsenic processing site is turned into an educational space. Our guide mentioned the “problems” that arise with the title UNESCO World Heritage as even the plaster of the buildings is filled with lead and other minerals.¹
Other buildings on the site are structurally composed of the residue slug from the smelter moulded into large rectangular building blocks. “If you removed the plaster or slug stones, will it still be heritage?”, asked the guide. A building had caught fire mere days before we visited, the water used to kill the fire was then contained in bags to avoid large amounts of toxins to flood the terrain.

When we consider the mobility of the toxins present here—penetrating walls, becoming airborne, seeping through the ground, entering water bodies—the capacity of this giant, heavy, steel ladle to join the studio participants’ conversing seems arguable as it creeps up close along with all the other “unruly heritage”.²

In what seems like a poorly audible reference recording at first, we soon come to notice the protagonist. The ladle’s bell shape creates a lingering low resonance and chime reminiscent of church bells. The conversations are slowly submerged by the oscillating matter of the ladle. The attached microphone detects vibrations inside the steel while a modified exciter speaker clinging onto the bell amplifies these vibrations in a process of “vibrotactile feedback”.³

We’re listening to the ladle’s most resonant frequencies akin its density and matter and in relation to the positioning and sensitivity of the technology operated by me. Two small DPA microphones attached to the recorder bag catch the ambient sound and are mixed in with the feedback. For some time we’re moving with the sounds of the ladle as slowly the group is withdrawing to continue their field visits. Near the end also the ladle turns silent and we are left with the ghosts of the blast furnace, the birds chirping and the breeze, stream and ants moving matter.