Bruce Munro, creator of the Field of Light installation at the Eden Project in Cornwall, has launched an appeal to collect old CDs which will be used to make his new installation, ‘CD Sea’, in Spring 2010.

Munro’s ‘CD Sea’ will be installed at Long Knoll Field in Wiltshire, and it will be the first of a number of self-funded installations using discarded materials.
The 10 acre field at Long Knoll is where in 2005 Munro installed a prototype of the Field of Light. A public footpath intersects the field, and as night fell unsuspecting walkers could be heard gasping in delight and calling to each other to watch the installation come to life.

In this setting ‘CD Sea’ will be on public view from the moment it is installed. Munro conceives it as an inland sea, made with one million discarded CDs laid over the cropped grass. They will create a carpet of glinting light, reflected from the sun, and in the evenings reflecting the silvery light of the moon.

Munro has obtained 150.311 CDs, but he needs 1M, and this is why he has launched an appeal in the form of a double page advert in this month’s idFX and FX magazines. Readers are fervently urged to participate by sending their unwanted CDs to Munro’s workshop in Wiltshire.



The installation will be created with the help of Munro’s personal friends including families with young children, who will be invited to spend a day in the Easter holiday laying CDs across the field and enjoying a large communal picnic.

As with the FoL, the catalyst for ‘CD Sea’ was living in Australia, where eight years of exposure to the Antipodean sun and its dazzling reflections left a lasting impression on Munro.

‘CD Sea’ came to Munro one Sunday afternoon on a rocky peninsular at Nielsen Park, one of the most beautiful Sydney harbour beaches, which had become a meditative spot for Munro. “The light was still strong, like a blanket of shimmering silver light. I had this childish notion that by putting my hand in the sea I was somehow connected to my home in Salcombe, where my father lived.”

“I came away from the beach in a very positive frame of mind, at one with the world” he says. It was the first time he was aware that the “play of light” had transformed his mood and he was astonished that something so familiar had the power to alter his emotional state. “CD Sea” is simply a reconstruction of this event which became a turning point in his life.

Munro doesn’t expect visitors to feel exactly as he did. “If it inspires some smiling faces then the emotional force has been successfully passed on” he says.

A website at www.cdsea.co.uk will keep a tally of CDs received, until Munro has collected 1 million. Images of the finished installation and news will be posted on the website, and fine art prints of the installation will be available to buy from the website in due course. The proceeds of these sales will go towards funding the next installation at Long Knoll.