100 Year Old Quicksilver Cloud is the first work in High Fidelity Wasteland—a trilogy by Darsha Hewitt that experiments with decomposing sound reproduction technology. Wading into the toxic haze of early transmission infrastructure, this installation sonifies the decaying atmosphere inside a thyratron, a hundred-year-old vacuum tube radiating a cloud of blue ionized mercury. Vacuum tubes generated, amplified, and controlled some of the earliest flows of electrons signaling the start of widespread communication networks:: radio, television, telephony, and computing. Produced prior to practices of planned obsolescence and outliving industrial life cycles of technology today, decommissioned liquified metals of the thyratron are a ruinous substrate of postindustrial ecology.

The work was commissioned by transmediale. The audio was produced in collaboration with AGF (Antye Greie-Ripatti).

The work is part of the culture program related to Canada’s Guest of Honour presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2020.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Canada.