Sewer, Sources is a 4 channels video installation. Each video was shot in specific sites where sewage water enters a urban river stream. The footage documents the hybrid ecology of these sites, the specific plant life, bacterial pools and insects that appear due to the change in nutrients in the water. The images were realised using a new rendering technique for animating 3D scanning.

The accompanying soundscape, also composed of field recordings from these sites translates the experience of the sudden changes and disturbances created by the sewer discharge events into the river.

Thomas Pausz’ solo show Haunted Ecologies at the Stanley Picker Gallery intersects the research fields of media, ecology and ‘hauntology’ – the understanding that our perception of contemporary environment and culture is haunted by spectres of the past and by hopes and visions of the future – to propose immersive installations echoing the transformations of a local riverine ecosystems.

The Stanley Picker Gallery is situated on an island along the Hogsmill River, a tributary of the Thames whose riverbank flora is immortalised in John Everett Millais’ famous painting of Ophelia. This exhibition presents a collection of works inspired by the ecology of the surrounding river. Haunted Ecologies echoes the transformations of the river over time and traces how, from Eadweard Muybridge’s landscape photography to contemporary digital image making techniques, media constellations change our perception of this ecosystem.

As a chalk stream, the Hogsmill River has an increasingly endangered ecology due to excessive extraction of water and increasing sewer discharge. This influx of sewage water on the one hand radically raises the nutrient level of the river, benefitting certain plants and hence causing changes in biodiversity, but on the other it also introduces a large variety of harmful polluting substances that threaten native fauna and flora.