other/other/other

Section Three of Four:

Day two:

Early on, Dot and I went out to Anglia Square to make new versions of the Floor Survey. I attached the mic directly to my shoe, in an attempt to echo Dot's visual movement. The results were interesting but not as varied as with the stick; there was more impact and less surface. We returned to Unit 5 and listened to the results, but decided not to install them. I thought it might be good to let the ambient sound of the space differ from the day before.

We held a group discussion before the public arrived, giving feedback on the day before, and ideas for the day ahead. I think this was really useful for anyone who, like me, had had a period of inactivity or indecision the previous day. It re-focused the activity as a group event rather than separate individual pieces. New ideas for collaborations emerged, and we got back to work.

We listened to the group recording from Saturday, and then I installed it inside a traffic bollard, and placed it outside the entrance. You could press your ear against the plastic and hear all the details of the sound. It was useful to have a ‘finished’ piece installed, to contrast with the process work that was going on.

Dot planned a video piece where the camera emerges and moves through the pile of balloons, using them as a visual and sonic filter, and she wanted us to create another group soundtrack. As we had an audience she decided to link her camera to the television so that the audience could see its movements, as well as watch the soundtrack being performed. She then extended the piece by filling a car with balloons, playing the group soundtrack from yesterday through the car stereo, and climbing in with the balloons in the restricted space. Interestingly, she felt that the second soundtrack was less successful than the first, possibly because we were repeating some elements rather than improvising anew, but also that there weren’t any of the wonderful coincidences that there were in the first piece.

Rachael continued to extend her thread drawings throughout the space, echoing the circular shapes that were emerging everywhere. Her work interacted well with Kate’s, whose lightbulb installations were moved around and modified for the Sunday. They were both responsible for altering the visual impact of the space, which is extremely evident when we watch back our slightly wonky timelapse video; it feels like the space has gone through twenty different variations in the weekend.

Bev’s piece evolved, as visitors to the space were encouraged to record a video response to the broadcast poetry. New phrases would emerge and loop, bringing to the foreground conversational stammers, breaths and corrections, which were not part of the original text.

Section Two of Four:

Dot Howard installed the Floor Survey piece we made in May. She set up a television for her video, while I set up an amplifier with corresponding sound. It provided a chance for us to reflect on the method of working in advance of our new local version. She taped bubblewrap across the entrance floor as a basic sound source, which was very popular with children. She then set about creating a carpeted workspace and filling it with modelling balloons for video filtering experiments.

Michael Ridge got straight to work on a Big Mouth Billy Bass he had found in a charity shop. It was skinned and suspended from a bracket near John's loop, with its wires hanging down to the floor. During the day he wired the sensor to a point near the entrance, and modified its sound so that whenever anyone entered the space the fish would twitch and squeal. He also began what looked like a constructivist assemblage, but which was actually pieces of charity shop cassette tape stuck to a board, which he then played with a tape head. By this stage, the room was getting very noisy…

I attached a contact mic to the underside of the visitors' comments table so that whenever they wrote the sound would be amplified. This became an instrument later on during the group improvisation, and resulted in lots of scribbly drawings where the marks were secondary to the sounds they produced. I also set up the bicycle wheel as a playable object, attaching it to a girder and tying paper cups to the spokes, with the instruction "Hold Me Tight". There were two violin bows available to play the spokes, and moving the cups to your ear amplified the vibrations.

The group came together at about 3pm to make a joint sound piece. John set up a new loop and then recorded the rest of us responding to it. Michael used his tape strips to generate short bursts of sound. Dot made low creaks with her balloons and a contact mic. I played the bicycle wheel, making drones. Kevin played extracts of audio, which at one point said "I am sending you the message now", coinciding with a lovely computer dial-up sound from John's loop. Kate made scratches and rhythms with the table. The whole piece was about 10 minutes long, and seemed to end quite naturally when one of the balloons burst.

Later on, Dot, Michael and I linked all the balloons together to form a giant, wobbling mass. We each attached a contact mic to a part of it and set about trying to generate feedback through the vibrations in the balloons, producing wonderful drones at different pitches. There were moments where we managed to hold onto a chord between us before the balloons twisted away. It could be developed into a succinct repeatable performance if we ever needed anything to tour…

This is the summary of most of the things that happened at Unit 5. There were many others, and as it is this post has had to be divided into four sections!

Section One of Four:

other/other/other at Unit 5
30th and 31st August 2008

Day one:

We arrived at the warehouse space at 9am on Saturday morning, all lugging heavy bags of equipment (as far as I can tell only one of the members has a car…). We had a discussion about individual plans for work and space and any ideas for group projects throughout the weekend, and then set about installing and arranging. The work during this early period seemed to set the tone for the rest of the weekend: testing and experimenting were integral to the work, and was visible to the audience. The space was open to the public from 12pm, and they gradually drifted in, all fully engaging with the activities, and interacting where possible. We spoke to visitors to make sure that the process was transparent, and throughout the day we all added notes and drawings to the Documentation Wall, charting moments in other people's activity and in the space as a whole.

John Boursnell made two or three reel-to-reel tape loops running through bars in the window, using computer generated sounds and live recordings of the ambient space. It provided a constant sound to which other artists (and public) could respond to. One loop was the starting point for a group improvisation in the middle of the afternoon.

Bev Broadhead set up her laptop, bluetooth, projector and assistant (Kevin Hunn) in a corner, and then ventured into local streets asking members of the public to read a line of poetry into her mobile phone camera. We received the first transmission at about 2pm, which added a nice human sound to the very digital and industrial ones dominating the space. Apparently the proportion of public asked was far greater than the proportion brave enough to be recorded!

Rachael Fisher installed a delicate nail and thread drawing across the whole of the back wall, using a circle and spoke arrangement which echoed the bicycle wheel we found in the space. Having work commitments, she left before the public opening, but in the spirit of group interaction left the work open to modification.

Kate Hodges took up the challenge, and carefully hung a single bulb in the centre of Rachel's work, projecting a shadow drawing over the original. She moved around the space, arranging bulbs around installations and artists, and dramatically changing the dynamics of the room. Some of the bulbs were on a timer, and at one point beautifully coincided with a line from Bev's recording: "sometimes things appear", lighting up the whole space.

We had a great time at Vicki Weitz's event last night (Live Art Platform: Picnic in the Church). It was a mixture of performances and installations ranging from a headphone piece recorded in surround sound by Mike Challis, to energetic counterbalancing dances by Base Dance. Dot and I made a 10 minute torchlit exploration of the space which was relayed through amplifiers and a television. We're very excited with the results, and are planning new variations on the piece…

Monday 22nd September 6-8.30pm

Meeting with Dot to test out plans for Colchester. Images and sound ended up being very scary, like insects or other scuttling creatures. Discussed the mutual benefits of the collaboration: we’ve each learnt huge amounts about using sound (Dot) and visuals (Holly) in ways we’d not been confident in before. I like the exchange of ideas, and the playfulness. It’s creating layers of meaning in the work where previously my work may have been to conceptual and dry…Having someone else to work with whose aims are so similar to my own has really helped me to challenge my practice and not stick to familiar areas.

Friday 19th September 2pm-4pm

Dot and I met at the Tea House to plan our joint performance in Colchester on the 27th. It will be held in St Martins Church (which has a beautiful tiles-and-wood floor), and we want to make this work very site specific and responsive to the atmosphere. It will also be interesting to ‘perform’ to an audience (however small it may end up being), because our previous floor survey pieces have been more of a personal exploration of a space with witnesses rather than audience members; shoppers have seen us walk past but we’ve not been doing a performance for them. With this in mind we have thought a lot more about lighting and choreography, whilst still keeping the conceptual focus on generating (extracting?) tiny sounds and visual textures from the space. I’ve become aware that my previous work with the contact mic on the bamboo cane is flawed, because you can hear the cane impacting on the surfaces without the amplification. I want to explore the element of surprise that comes when an object makes a sound which it isn’t supposed to make. For that reason I will be using a peacock feather to trace along the surfaces; it is inaudible unless attached to the mic, when it becomes rustling, and snagging, and slightly like a long breath. We will both be using torchlight to limit the focal point for the audience, and allow us to extract ourselves from the ‘performance’; the sounds and images are the most important thing, not the authorship. The peacock feather was chosen because of its sound qualities and the length of its reach, but I am aware that it is also hugely theatrical and ostentatious. I love the contrast between its historical associations with decadent costume and theatre and the tiny, hushed little sounds it will be generating in this performance. I also like the ritualistic action it will impart. I recently went to see Adam Chodzko’s show at Tate St Ives, which had some lovely playful mythologies, and I think the careful, studied routes Dot and I make through spaces has some similar grounding; we’ll be more responsive to the space as a church, as a site for ritual, and allow the objects we use in this performance to be more evocative.