Well we finally did it. Myself and long time collaborator Soundcube performed at last nights Cafe Concrete. Was a good night after a few problems with the laptops soundcard but all went well in the end. We had not practised or formally rehearsed but had a few discussions on how we were going to proceed. Soundcube used a patch he had created with max/msp and some ambisonic recordings of ominous clips he had captured around the city. I used a minidisc loaded with samples and sonic art pieces that i had created, and plugged a microphone into my MS2000. Throughout the performance i switched between the inputs on my MS2000 to use the onboard delay and modulation to control my minidisc recordings and any sounds i made into the mic (supplemented with a theramin, a plastic whirly tube, tibetan singing bowl and various other thing-a -me-jigs). We both enjoyed ourselves immensley and were proud that we did not once resort to using anything approaching the musical to take the audience on a surreal and disturbing sonic journey through a shared aural soundscape.
Just returned from exhibiting Freddy's Story in the Installation Zone at this years Sonic Arts Network annual Expo held in Brighton. The highlight of the festival for me was "Horatio Oratorio" -A concert & sound installation by Aleksander Kolkowskiaka & Recording Angels held in Brighton's Jubilee Library. The work comprising of specially made wax cylinder and disc recordings, including recreations of some of the earliest speech and music transcriptions, played back over antique Graphaphone, Phonograph and Gramophone players was exceptional. Without wanting to sound trite I experienced something like an emotional epiphany as these rare audio gems crackled back to life through a forest of vintage horns, restoring the art of recorded sound back to its true elevated state, as a treasure trove of remnance in a world dominated by visual art. Also worthy of a mention was Dawn Scarfe's "Lenses" another sonic gem from the Darlington born Goldsmiths graduate that explored pitch and resonance using different sized glasses, each with their own speaker to propagate the same sound at their own unique frequency, acting as sonic lenses.
Freddy's Story has been selected for inclusion in the InstallationZone at this years Sonic Arts Network annual Expo to be held in Brighton. The work will be installed at The lighthouse Arts and Trainingcentre, 1 Zone B, 28 Kensington Street, Brighton, BN1 4AJ.Showing between 10:30 a.m and 7:00 p.m on Saturday 5th Julyand between 11:00 a.m and 5:00 p.m on Sunday 6th July 2008.Entrance is Free.
This month myself and my long time collaborator and friend the artist Soundcube took the opportunity to visit Cafe Concrete, a monthly event for all things Sonic and Performance Art related that occurs on the first Monday of every month upstairs at Plymouth's Voodoo Lounge.First up was Nick Grew a friend and associate from Plymouth Music Zone whose performance was as inspirational and nourishing as his long term leadership at the afore mentioned community youth partnership.Nick took a seat to the right of the stage armed with a music box, (miked with piezzo?), mini-disc, (containing what sounded like edits from Classical or Ballet performances), Kaoss Pad and various pedals. Reminiscent of a cross between DJ Shadow, Anne Dudley (ArtofNoise) and Angelo Badlementini, the dark brooding reverberations that marked the room silencing opening to his improvised set unfurled into a genre eclipsing soundscape that metamorphoses the music box from African thumb piano to Gamelan and focused ones ear on the importance of timbre, rendering at times his fragile beautiful melodies as impotent spokesmen reborn as thunderous harbingers of percussive doom.Also appearing was a local performance arist/filmaker Dan Petley (Liono pictured below) sporting an immaculately manicured moustache, he took to the stage bare chested, with a cardboard megaphone, thumping a garden Gnome across his chest proclaiming "BUH!" as his film was projected onto the adjoining wall.Dada/Flux/Stuckist....awesome.
On March 14th at a glitzy awards ceremony held in Plymouth'sHoliday Inn, "Darwin's Walk" picked up the winning prize in the Media Innovation Awards, "Installation/Exhibition" Category. Sam and Martin the craftsmen who constructed the metal sculpture , the students involved in the project, Manishima the shadow artist and Soundcube the lead artist , were all present to accept the award for the sonic sculpture that was exhibited as part of Expo youth at the Sonic Arts Networks annual Expo held in Plymouth in the summer of 2007.The award itself was designed and fabricated by a student from the same art college as those involved in the conceptualization, development and execution of Darwin's Walk. The award was accepted as a validation for the students and a timely reminder that learning is a lifelong process to be engaged with between people of all ages and abilities. Not forgetting the inspirational role that established artists can play in motivating those who seek to contribute to the creative landscape that enriches and informs the lives of us all."Long live Francis Dhomont".
With the first part of the study into LIFE, DISINTEGRATION AND THE ABSENCE OF MATTER now complete, work into the second and final triptych in this series has now begun.The life section will this time consist of a new sonicarrangement of the late poet Charles Causley's poem "Mary, Mary Magdalene", with the good people of Launceston , the Cornish town in which Mr Causley taught and spent his life , providing the voices which will be assembledaccording to age from 0-100, in reading the poem as it progresses from childhood to old age. The installation will also contain a super-slow motion replay of each participants pebble tumbling toward the granite statue of Mary Magdaleneon the east wall of the church bearing her name, the tradition being, that any stone remaining lodged on her back will bring good fortune to the person who threw it.The DISINTEGTRATION section will again use time-lapse phonography to capture another 12 hours of audio events, this time from midnight till midday , and THE ABSENCE OF MATTER will again utilise film and real room reverberation in exciting and unexpected ways.
In a world where visual art takes precedence over the sonic realm it is useful to examine the way painting has remained a powerful tool in enabling one to cut to the essence of what seeing really means.Within the constraints of the frame the artist is able to impose boundaries that emphasis the decisions made over subject matter, subjectivity, emotional response to and representation of, the seen and the way in which it is perceived. Here is where sonic work canbe heard as the natural summit of conceptual art. We hear all the time, every day, but it is only when a snapshot or collage of soundis confined within its own distinct time frame, (the process of recording replacing the painters canvas or the photographers lens)that the real essence of what it is to hear, is revealed. This abstraction of the multitudinous event reconstituted into a singular experience has enabled the conceptual hypothesis that obfuscates the translation of the three dimensional world into a flat two dimensional visual representation to be overcome in Sonic Art that surrounds us. With multi-speaker spatialisation sound can break out of the novelty stereo aspect that like a canvas can reduce its dimensional impact. For Sonic Artists the trained ear is like the visual artists conscious eye, a means of distilling the very heart of our waking experience. If to live is to broaden ones experience then to listen is a way to open up the ear and unblock another channel through which lifecan be revealed.For years many pieces of Sonic Art have been organised likea Classical Performance, with the audience seated in rows armedwith a programme to lead them through the recital. Each pieceis played often from a recording in turn followed by polite applause. This is an anathema that sonic art should rail against.It is as though the classical repertoire of standard compositions by dead composers is something to aim towards, in an attempt at gaining respectability with the vain concept of being taken seriously. This is no more revolutionary than the idea that painting is the highest form of art against which site specific installations andinteractive work is frivolous and meaningless.Sonic art arrived in response to the dead end that music had found itself in when serialism and dissonance were exhausted.Unlike two dimensional visual art confined to the cul-de-sac of gallery walls, and Classical Music's elevated fortress behind the high brow walls of concert halls, Sonic art like conceptual, performance and site specific art responds to it's audiencewhere it finds them. On the beach, in the town centre, in a garden,at places of work and education, in hospitals, or on a mountain.The commonly held view of many art critics is that interactive work can only be experienced once and then becomes repetitive and pointless. This is crass, ignorant and built on the supposition that only a trained eye can unlock the many hidden depths held within the layers of a great painting. The painter's technique, his relationship with the subject, what he is really trying to say. It is as though hundreds of years ago with the development of stable pigments the only language able to convey anything of universal meaning was developed and agreed upon and art had reached it's nadir. Hidden depth and meaning can be imbued in works of all media, and sonic/interactive work can add yet more layers withthe ability to respond to those present long after the artist has left the building. It can really TALK to its audience, it can hold a two way conversation without the need of some Freud obsessed amateur psychologist /art critic gently holding the patron's hand and condescending to their supposedly limited knowledge. Do not get me wrong, to have the privilege of connecting with a great painting and to share that euphoric connection with the ideas, heart and mind of an artist who though not present, is able to communicate with great clarity through their work is not an experience to be easily dismissed. Just do not assume that that samesense of elevation and emotional engagement can only be achieved through a musical or visual connection. Sound, with its multi-dimensional cascades of cadence, vibration and timbre can elicit these same responses if only you open your ears, heart and mind to the possibility.
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