VISUAL RECORDINGS @ All The Shapes 11 August - 11 October

Solo exhibition on now

11th August - 11th October 2017

All The Shapes

Prestwich, Manchester

Selected prints, drawings and graphic scores with a new site-specific collage.

The Other Room 9th Anthology

My page in the Other Room 9th Anthology showing a scan of the poster I made of my sound sources and equipment for the performance at The Other Room's 8th Birthday. The Anthology features contributions from performers, poets and artists who appeared at The Other Room during 2016 to April 2017. It is available to purchase in person at the event, usually held at The Castle, Manchester.

The Other Room 13/04/2016 report.

On 13th April 2016 I made a performance for The Other Room's 8th Birthday in Manchester.

The Other Room is a reading series presenting experimental writers at The Castle Hotel in Manchester.

I usually let some time pass before reflecting or reporting on a performance.

This was my first performance for a while and I could not have hoped for a better night. The other performers were excellent too.

I always like to try new things so this time I produced a free hand out with a drawing of my set up and list of sound sources. This was the first time I have composed live using mainly playback devices with pre recorded sounds including some of my own field recordings, a mobile phone app of relaxation sounds and the FM3 Buddha Machine. On a whim, I also brought along my lucky cat to provide some visual rhythm. And good luck.

Free photocopied handout from the performance.

During set up the synthesiser shown in the drawing was replaced by my trusty amplified book which just seemed more appropriate at the time and provided some nice acoustic sounds to go with the other noises.

The initial idea was to make a piece along the lines of Musique Concrete and ended up as something breaking probably every rule of that.

A video of my performance:

Link to all videos from the night:
https://otherroom.org/2016/04/21/videos-from-the-other-room-8th-birthday/

The Other Room:
https://otherroom.org/

Drawings for tape loop installation

Drawings for a site-specific tape loop installation at The London College of Communication.

Felt pen on A4 monochrome prints from digital photos showing ideas for a site-specific installation with a small reel-to reel tape recorder running a loop of tape along the length of a set of metal railings playing back a continuos loop of the sound of my hand running along the railings once from one end to the other. The action is performed and recorded once with the rest of the tape containing silence. The actual sound would not take up the same length of tape as the length of the railing though the tape moving along the full length of the railing and the visual association with the sound, it's source and the movement of the tape may create that impression.

"OBJECT / ACTION / SOUND" Proposal

Notes for project on making sounds with objects.

Today I made a proposal to my MA group for the final project of the course. The focus of the project is to look at what is at the core of my interests as an artist- making sounds with objects-  and make some detailed studies of particular objects while exploring their sound-making possibilities. This will be an attempt to get to the heart of what it is that I am trying to do with my work by stripping away all the many and various elements that go into and come out of the work and focus on the one that is most important to me. I am working towards a series of performances with objects and instruments that are about exploring the 'basic' idea of performing actions with objects with the intention of creating sounds. Of course this idea is not so basic as by giving myself restrictions and boundaries to work within and taking a hyper-focussed approach highlights the potential complexity and possibilities of going from the general to the specific. Also there are many questions raised about the focus on myself as the  artist and performer and why this work must result in a live performance. I feel this project is a very personal one as it is important that I am bringing my own approach, idiosyncrasies, measure and sensitivity to the objects and the fact that it is a performance allows this to be seen and heard first hand. The audience will see the artist making decisions, deciding how, when and when not to act and hear the resulting sound. One thing I want to avoid is the focus on the artist as the 'master of ceremonies' the magician who is performing mystical acts. I want no illusions. One challenge is how to make the work interesting and engaging if it is apparently so simple in concept and execution without it becoming self -indulgent noodling or a dry demonstration exercise.

Record Sleeve Cymbal Drawings

Drawings from tracing the edge 3 different sized cymbals with marker pens. The record sleeves with holes in the centre were placed on top of the others making two drawings when separated. One of the drawings is on brown paper bag, for some reason it felt right to break the pattern.

Record sleeves

Some selected scans from the Record Sleeves series of drawings, prints and collage onto found paper 45 sleeves.

The first is a laser-jet print of a transcript from two tape recordings of journeys. Typed onto a till roll as part of a 2008 project of recording random journeys and later typing from the tapes, the text is a mix of describing what I heard on the tape and the memory of what I heard, saw and did on the journey. At the time I was only vaguely aware of Situationism and the similarities in my work. It has since become a valuable reference point.

The second is another re-used image from a previous stage in my work- part of the Mechanical Drawings  series from 2007-2009- is laser printed onto the top corner of the paper sleeve. The old sticky-tape, number 37 and signature of the previous owner become part of the new composition and of course the hole which has removed a large part of the original drawing.

These two circular drawings are made by fixing drawing media- a black marker pen and graphite stick to the arm of a record player and letting the turntable do the drawing. The graphite was so light that the record player had to be left running for some time before the pattern became clear. The writing crossed out in blue felt-pen was already on the sleeve when found.

Piece for ...menu for murmur: a small cymbal placed on top of a speaker playing the sound of the cymbal being hit and brought close to the mic from a CD player powered by a small amp unit for which I built the circuit myself. The original idea was for the speaker to vibrate from the tone of itself, which worked nicely on tape but not so well on CD, such is the nature of improvised work. Still the sound and tone is altered by the cymbal placed on the speaker to an interesting effect. One the loudest things in the exhibition. The whole exhibition works really well with some automatic sounds happening regularly, some interactive ones happening sporadically and some pieces that don't make actual sound but get the imagination working on what sounds there could be. The sounds all work together to create a kind of ongoing live composition and performance.

Notes and drawings for amplified floorboard exhibit.