This work I’ve titled a Cacophonic Reverie in Perpetual Convolution. It’s an installation piece with numerous different elements to it.

It has the main video work 2h 38mins long, displayed on a projector and three CRT monitors – two of which display it in reverse, all with staggered starting points to avoid synchronicity.

A soundtrack featuring spoken word, piano , synthesiser, and a recorded and distorted performance/ soundscape; technically totalling well over than 10 hours of separate audio recordings (including several tracks being played in reverse as well), but put through six different speakers all out of sync meaning that the duration is indefinite.

There are three other films played on a reel on a 22 inch wall mounted  flat screen TV:

Arachnophobia (17mins); Bohemian Butchery (11mins); and Transmissions from the Celestial Wireless (25mins).

As well as this I’ve included four large prints on fabric:

Two on viscose lawn 145x257cm2 which are suspended above the space using thread, and two on viscose satin 138x244cm2 which are pinned to the walls.

Seven smaller prints on viscose velvet satin are also draped across the walls.

 

 

 

The work has developed from numerous idea sources. So much so that I’d say it’s almost quite hard to explain or understand, and for the viewer I hope some meaning will seep through. Its title a Cacophonic Reverie in Perpetual Convolution, may seem like grandiloquence and arguably it is. Firstly we have the juxtaposing phrase Cacophonic Reverie which refers both to the, at times quite jarring, and times more ambient noise; and a dream or trance like state I intend for the viewer to get some sense of. Perpetual Convolution is more a reference to the busy, confused – or convoluted – mind eternally stuck in this state. Really it’s a hyperbolic symbolistic or expressionist recreation of my own perpetually messy mind. Here the durational aspects of the piece also are relevant. It is ‘perpetual’ referring also to the installation’s supposedly infinite nature, the idea being that all elements of it are at least a bit out of sync and also each separate part of it – of which there are quite a few – go on for long periods of time anyway. Therefore the installation never repeats itself: each person gets their own version of it, also highlighting the idea that each person’s perspective and perception of it are unique (as they are with anything) which is a nod to the non-repetitive nature of time and the universe, illustrating that nothing is ever perfectly the same as it also depends on this idea of the universe providing it its full context (a hard notion to put into words). It’s an excessive and kind of silly idea: how long some of the elements of this piece are. Considering the average person will spend no more than five minutes in the space.The duration is supposed to give it a sense of life – like it’s in some way organic or mimicking at least; and a sense that it continues to exist with shifting personalities once even the most committed viewer gives up and decides that they will never make it to the end. I intend that this be in some representational of a relationship with a real human being, in the sense that everyone gets a different experience of it and will form a judgement or interpretation based off that. There will be periods when one is trapped in a cacophony and other periods when there is more a sense of ambience – as well as plenty of somewhere inbetweens.

 

The main video work is a composite of doesens of video clips superimposed over each other in one long (2h 38min) adobe premiere pro sequence. The source material used, was all from my archive of fairly random videos I’d taken over the course of the last two or three years. Some of it was figurative; although generally my style of documentation borders on the surreal thus much seems to be odd or unexplained. Much of the rest of the footage is purely abstract, with the focus being on light and colour. I have done frequent experimentation with the ways that filming lights can interact with the camera, and I find it often has some very interesting results. Anyway, the idea is that the abstract and the figurative are forced into interaction, and the clips are blended together, creating these hallucinatory or dreamlike composites. They become visions or confused memories. For me they sort of simulate the idea of dreams in the sense that multiple memories are attempted at once, and converge to become something that’s not quite either, but contain their reminiscence.

Various effects were used here, in particular the opacity effect, which has various options and adjustments, but simply put, allowed me to layer multiple videos on top of each other and their shapes and colours can be made to interact in different ways. Adjusting the speed and reversing clips I’d cite as another of the more conceptually important effects utilised. The work wants to convolute notions of reality: time; space; perception, etcetera. In fact two of the shown versions on the CRT monitors are the film played in reverse. It doesn’t make much difference really. It is all abstract and distorted and enough of it was already in reverse that it’s impossible for someone other than myself to be able to tell for sure which version was the original. In some ways this gave a lot of freedom to the editing process, as there was never any right or wrong – apart from what felt right and what felt wrong. It was never trying to be something specific, not even a direct imitation of the experience of a dream. It was more a process of mimicking this idea digitally with a knowing sense that it would become something of its own: a rendering; but also not just for the sake of its creation but for the sake of it being experienced.

 

The sound comes out of six separate speakers in the space. They’re positioned so that they surround you as you enter (as are the TVs). Four higher up and the bigger ones closer to the ground so that the sounds seems to be barraging you from every angle. The sound played from both speakers on the floor is the same. It is a recording of a performance that I did last year. It involved me coaxing myself into a trance like state and improvising sounds and music with a variety of things which included: a wine rack, my voice, pool balls, glasses, pots and pans, a radiator, bubble wrap, a synthesiser, and a cigarette, among other things. These sounds were picked up by a microphone and a hydrophone (detecting vibrations/ sound through solid and liquid, and they I had Ableton live suite setup so they went through several layers of effects and the sounds came out of the headphones I had on. Everyone who came to witness the event was only able to hear the naturalistic nose, whereas the sounds I was hearing- those which I was then making more noise in response to – would only be heard by me. It was a durational piece with an aim to be twelve hours long. Sadly due to technical issues I was only able to do about five and a half hours worth. That being said, this was very interesting, atmospheric sound, and so, I think that repurposing it here worked perfectly. In fact, I don’t always see my works as singular, but all part of one big tapestry of life. It fit with this piece perfectly, because this was very much the continuation of a train of thought. During this performance, I had the notion that I was creating the sound that was inside my head as a result of hearing the sound. It was like a closed loop in which the sound seemed to become my thought and feeling whilst my thought and feeling were released as sound (notably how a lot of jazz musicians talk about their improvisations). Of course this was coupled with that conceptual toying with perspective, representative of the idea that one’s experiences even when shared remain distinctly personal, as any communication is also merely a rendering of an internal process. A profound, mesmerising and somewhat psychedelic experience for myself, looked like an odd exercise in insanity for its witnesses, who only experienced strange wailing and tapping and actions that seemed not to mount to much with no palpable sense of what was going into the microphone, and moreover, what was coming out of the headphones.

 

The duration of this work (in general) is a very important part of it. It can be seen to be almost infinite, especially for the purposes of the degree show exhibition. Each element varies length, and remains perpetually out of sync. As a result, it can never perfectly repeat itself. Every time it is seen, the viewer will be given a unique experience of it. The sounds and images will interact in different ways with each other in an almost organic way. In some ways it could be said to be purely expressing an extenuation of the idea that every perspective and experience is unique; and the idea that along the flowing stream of time no water will form the same shape twice – and no neurons will ever fire in perfectly composed synchronicity. Some people will find the work to be confusing and overbearing, whilst others will find ambiance, different utterances standing out, and maybe even hinting at something supremely meaningful – or vaguely.

 

As well as the audio from the performance I also had a couple of piano and synth recordings in the mix. Bringing the music I play into my practice has been an important step and very beneficial too I think. I find that conceptually speaking it’s very much intermingled with the rest of my practice. I’ve played the piano for some time now, and recently taken up (hand) drums, as well as dabbling in whatever I can get my hands (/fingers) on. I am self taught, I can’t read music particularly well, and so most of what I play is purely improvisational. It’s lead by feeling as with my experimental performance. I think a sense of this becomes apparent upon listening. I wanted this audio to be as pure an expression of the psyche as possible , however with each of the six speakers playing different things, the layering makes each track become part of this messy orchestra of confusion and convolution.

 

The rest of the audio was spoken monologues. The total length of the couple that made the final cut sit at over three hours of me talking into the microphone. Once again I took the same sort of approach here, but with the spoken word. I tried to clear my head of rationality and awareness and let out what comes out. The vocal output then becomes chains of thought, puns and wordplay, ‘pseudo philosophical jibber jabber’, and fourth wall breaking self referencing as at points I let myself become aware of my usage for these recordings and thus embodied the artwork in an envisioned finished state and spoke from its perspective. This is another part that I’ve reversed and played around with various effects with. Voices (all mine) echo from all around with  layers of atmospheric background noises. Shifts in syllables, rhymes, meanings.

 

My work is a strange amalgamation of expression and introspection. Ideas are juggled, words are skewed and tempted into misinterpretation and often nothing makes any sense. My mind itself gives me the most inspiration, which sounds arrogant or egotistical, however on the contrary it’s not because it is ‘special’ (more than anyone else’s) that I feel this way. The miracle of the existence of the universe; the fact that something exists – as oppose to nothing. Logical hoops for our minds to try and jump through when thought deep enough about. Somehow this universe has evolved for long enough, within its own ultra-extensive margins of possibility, to produce life; to become capable of perception, thought, consciousness. How strange. But here we have it. What to do about it? What to think about it? Well; what have we done? What have we thought?

 

I think it’s fair to say that the breadth of my work tends to be routed in this deep sense of existential confusion. It’s a confusion that sometimes drives me crazy. Sometimes it’s driven me to excesses of nihilism; other times purpose; joy; freedom. Always though, it begs questions. A lot of the time these questions are unanswerable mind you. Or otherwise they are answerable, but no scientific test, nor philosophical thought experiment, can prove rights and wrongs of course. Logic leads us to likelihoods, and leads people like me to believe they know better than others, and then people like the others to believe they know better than them, and then me with my simple beliefs. We form cultures religions which, beautiful as they can be, divide us into segregated belief systems. We make up stories, and deities to explain it all: existence, etcetera. Of course that is just my perspective on the matter; a slice of it at that anyway, and only expressed through the written word. My point here being though, that there is little certainty to be found outside of the notion that all is uncertain; and the idea of that can come with, both an existential angst, and a sense of pure ideological freedom. Whether we notice it or not, this foundation of freedom is what we build each of our beliefs on.

 

Perspective is another fundamental aspect of my general thought process. The work I make is both derived from and – more importantly – inciting experiences. There is a vague difference between what it is about and what I want it to do. So, I have my mind: the epicentre of my own perceptual experience. I question what it is as a substance? And then in some way, I see my practice as tending to deal with surrealism, expressionist and dadaist concepts, but with an attempt to approach them in a way that I feel is very much my own. This work certainly seems to me to fit with Andre Breton’s original manifesto – ‘Pure psychic automatism’ etc. I find it’s maybe the most candid sort of artistic expression of the self, whilst it feels that it often releases things that feel universally true for the human experience.

 

Arachnophobia (17mins) is the the first of the films I’ve put on the flatscreen reel. It features high contrast, often out of focus, very abstract footage of a spider trapped in a glass, struggling against its impenetrable enclosure. I recorded some piano in response to the imagery which I then reversed and then put over the original and added djembe drums – also reversed – which culminated to form a soundtrack intended to mimic an impalpable sense of fear. I used this soundtrack to then give me some rhythm in the editing process. I also used the audio as part of the general sound of the installation (as with Transmissions Through The Celestial Wireless) as well as dropping small hints to its imagery in the longer composite  video for the installation. These films are separate works, and sound is played through headphones, but they also find themselves integrated and becoming part of the wider installation – not to mention the fact that even with headphones on, the complete lack of any type of noise cancellation, means that they are very much just another layer to the audio track anyway.

The film is can be seen to be directly representative if one tries hard enough to make it so. The use of a spider with occasional appearances of a fly have obvious connotations, though the film doesn’t allow it to be quite that simple. The imagery is abstract and repetitive, and the score echoes this. The viewer could see themselves as the trapped spider, or the unsuspecting fly, or not see themselves as part of anything and merely feel a sense of unease whether or not they suffer from arachnophobia. The indistinct shifting perspectives let it become about fear itself.

 

The next film Bohemian Butchery (11mins) was documentation of friend and artist Charlie Coulthard, who, when we were walking home together from a party together drunk at 4:30am, convinced me to take a detour down the road where he’d earlier seen an abandoned leather sofa sitting on the pavement which he had come prepared to strip it of the leather with a scalpel. I obliged and filmed it.