Programme
Lee Patterson + Dave
Griffiths, Heatwork for Sparklers and Spycams, 4.50
Heatwork
centres on discovery of sound in objects, structures and spaces,
where it's presence is an invitation to engage with the source. In
this collaboration both sources and sounds are raw materials in a
process of sonic and optical inscription that utilises basic
recording technology and a performative working process. The
spectacle is a celebration of the material properties of source
matter and original event.
Paul Cordwell + Loop
Aznavour, Ugly Little Ornaments 1/2/3
DVD is a giddy
parade of sensation with the illusion of viewer control, where the
order of images is secondary to their meaningless digestion. This
restless smorgasbord pollutes and supersedes the surrounding home -
which necessarily banishes tasteless kitsch (so as not to compete
visually or conceptually with the life-affirming medium). In these
pieces, the frames become storage units for the inert kitsch of
ornamental forerunners to DVD's inchoate hyperactivity. Baroque music
draws non-viewers' attention to static ornaments looking back, and
transposes expected optical activity into sound. These 'potters
wheels' paradoxically critique the ubiquitous, active screens of
techno-innovation.
Suki Chan + Mayming,
Shadow Songs, 5.00
This animation
interprets Pliny's myth of the origin of drawing, where a young girl
traces her lover's shadow to capture his presence - he later
disappears and is never seen again. The sound is a modern account of
a traditional folk song from remote southern China, whose original
words have been forgotten in time. Made in collaboration with Dinu Li
and Andy Hunwick (422 ltd).
Jacob and Daniel
Cartwright, The Heap, 2.00
The work is a
digital fantasy: pixel creatures wander the forest and gravitate
inexorably towards the rhythmic splendour that is the heap of primal
matter. The creatures are drawn to and transfixed by this elemental
fountain. The pixel bestiary commences an instinctive dance to the
throb and pulse of the quivering heap as a state of wild
transfiguration is achieved. A wonder of fecundity, a myth: the
spitting geyser taps deep into its mucilaginous reservoir. Its
ceaseless convulsions describe a natural cycle of life, death and
compostation. The Cartwright Brothers use software and the machine to
chisel their creatures in a work that moves them from synthetic
vagrancy to God's ineffable animal pyramid.
Scott Byrne + Happy
Fingers, Crossroads, 7.30
Crossroads are
sites of impromptu magical performance - secret spaces where
indescribable events and changes occur. Here it was possible to sell
your soul to the devil in return for mastery of a skill. This outside
place is now duplicated millions of times in every town and city,
potentially reducing the substance of sacred and feared spaces
through familiarity. Now artworks, once considered sacred and
singular, are digitised for infinite, perfect duplicates. Does this
mass compression and proliferation, the conversion of emotive images
and sounds, make the work any less powerful? Are we selling our souls
at the digital crossroads?
Nick Jordan, A Road
Movie, 3.00
A filmic
construct mirroring the outcome of hand-cranked projection and the
flicker of celluloid as it interleaves through the gate. A real-time
loop built with the aid of bicycle, DV camera, and two identified
points with which to begin and end.
Joe Devlin,
Dictaphone, 2.00
Found
dictaphone tape on street corner subject to removal of speech,
highlights the materials used to make recording. Sound fabricated by
Ben Gwilliam.
Nick Jordan, Another
Road Movie, 1.10
Intersection of
French landscape as seen from a speeding car at noon with digital
arabesques generated by tape replay pressed on fast
forward.
Kristín
Scheving + Spencer Marsden, X-Time, 4.25
Images and
sound recorded in Reykjavik 10 minutes before and after New Years
Eve, overlayed with audio captured from internet pornography. A
narrative of expectation, sexual energy and celebration is wryly
evoked through the combination of audio sampling and a climactic
firework display.
Blake Quentin +
Coryn Smethurst, Symbolic Exchange & Death, 1.20
Insect eyes and
menu-icons, in mutual regard, form a multi-layered system. The film
interprets the restless repetition and redundancy of menu and insect
behaviour as typical of absurd technological society. The visual and
sonic play alludes to our hyped digital utopia - the tension between
an unbridled material and its standardization into discrete binary
units.
Carl Turton, Object
/ Sound / Movement, 2.20
These three
excerpts are from a collection of eight formal observations of
objects. Choice of object arises from experimentation with potential
sounds that can be created through physical interaction with each
item. Sound is approached as a painterly consideration of line, tone
and colour. These repetitive, looped compositions playfully structure
sound into percussion, and movement into dance - creating audio and
visual experiences that work as rhythmic wholes.
Jenna Collins + Jane
Brake, Flying From The Ground, 4.30
The aeroplane,
once-potent symbol of progressive modernity, has become a problematic
and contradictory motif. Concorde crashed. Warplanes are flown
virtually. Return to Malaga, £35. On 9/11 planes took lead roles
in a video loop where real life trumped fiction over and over again.
Flight paths redraw world maps and suggest escape and routine. The
plane viewed from the ground can be a wistful, graceful thing too.
These pieces allow symbolic, narrative or political aspects of the
plane to play out ambiguously, whilst the artists occupy themselves
with more formal concerns: the difference between looking, hearing
and being.
Illuminati + Ben
Schmark, Fait Accompli, 4.00
In
investigative journey through the pipes of a failed, automated drug
manufacture process. The endoscope records vapours, contours,
embolisms, and various liquids or foreign matter resulting from
cross-contamination. The interplay of light and an organic,
respiratory soundtrack evoke a feeling of claustrophobia, compression
and discovery. The found-footage has been captured through a looped
video signal, generating unpredictable image feedback.
Dave Griffiths,
Rogue State, 2.20
A set of vetoed
resolutions was inscribed onto tape using a magnetic quill. In the
digital apparatus, these fragile, analogue impulses produce lawless
sonic and visual explosions - making a fluid spectacle of synthetic
apocalypse. The action occupies and confuses the space between labour
and immediacy in old and new media, and alludes to links between
entertainment and military technology. As compressed light and sound
are unleashed in illusive, volatile single-frame bursts, the notion
of digital perfection is tested.
Abstract Earth +
Mark Pilkington, Piano: A Sound Object, 4.40
12,000 pieces
of wood, steel and felt - seemingly unsympathetic materials for a
piano. The piece explores its construction and deconstruction by
assembling recorded sounds taken from these components. These were
arranged in an abstract structure of sound objects and juxtaposed
against familiar pitched tones performed on a live acoustic piano.
The time-lapsed visuals depict an image of a toy piano encased in a
melting ice cube.
Jenny
Hallström, The Girlz, 2.55
The
sound is of two women who passed the artist in the street every
weekday at approximately the same time for more than a month The
artist and a friend, Nikki Cooper, quietly construct intriguing
stories about the two women. The visuals are stills of transcripts of
these recordings. The film documents a period of time, through
repetition and the compression of narrative.
Tamzin Forster, The
Print Machine, 3.40
A slow pan and
zoom around the mechanics of a printing press. Highlighting the
duplication and ryhthmic procedures in the construction of text, the
piece subtly illuminates ambiguity in language through it's
fabrication and distribution. The reiteration of the printed word
acquires aesthetic strangeness, where meaning may lose or gain
significance.