Nick's WWH

First draft here:[edit]

work one

what

The work uses its surroundings, but it is not context specific per se, it could be transferred to another location. At the top of a set of stairs (three flights, spiral) a speaker is hanging from the ceiling. It is light grey, the colour of floor paint in a standard exhibition space, suspended by a rope passed between two pulleys, attached to the ceiling at one end and the wall at the other. The speaker resembles a bell and plays a series of recordings of bells on a loop. As a viewer enters the block of flats and climbs the stairs, the sound of the bells reverberates around the space.

how

The recordings of bells were found on freesound.org, a website which hosts Creative Commons-licensed sounds uploaded by users. I took the first 100 sounds tagged with the word ‘bell’. The speaker was a tannoy speaker that I repurposed from a previous exhibition. I attached the speaker to a block of wood with bolts, and attached one of the pulleys to the wood, the other to the ceiling and one eyelet screw into the wall, another into the ceiling. I then used the rope to hoist up the speaker and ran audio cables along the rope from an amplifier. There was an iPod plugged into the amplifier, playing the sounds on loop.

why

It was quite a quick, intuitive piece made mostly with what I had available to hand. I was spending a lot of time on freesound exploring the range of sounds people were recording and uploading. The shape of the speaker resembling a bell was a cheap gag but I was also thinking about the ways in which new media act as containers for older ones, about the lineage of sound as a control mechanism (through the authority of the church through to the contemporary use of sound in the urban environment) and the interaction between digital and physical spaces.

works two

what

The installation consists of minor alterations to the space and a short film projected onto a free-standing screen. The room already resembles an office and this sense is heightened by the addition of a grey carpet and blinds on the window. The projector is mounted on a reinforced ceiling tile. The film shows scenes shot mostly outdoors, with aspects of rural everyday life (tractors ploughing fields) interspersed with shots of military installations, iconographic catholic statuary and other subjects. There is a voiceover spoken by a man and a woman which relates to the content of the images, sometimes obliquely and sometimes more explicitly.

how

I had a small amount of funding which allowed me to spend three weeks shooting on the Uists. Driving around in a small yellow Peugeot, I interviewed various people about their relationship to the military base and the history of the public sculptures of Madonna and Child which had been commissioned in response to it. Back in Glasgow, I spent further weeks editing the footage in the basement of Transmission, an artist-run space with some basic audio-visual facilities, and developed the voiceover from transcripts of the interviews. I installed the show with a little help from friends and the people who run the gallery.

why

I had been interested in the specific and complex history of Uist for some time and had visited previously to shoot footage for a previous exhibition. There were many strands of this history in which I was interested, including the changing use of the landscape, ideas of the sublime and the deployment of public art simultaneously as devotional sculpture and a political statement. The original plan had been to include the interviews I conducted in the final film, but I decided to develop the voiceover instead after one of the interviewees contacted me to say that her job at the base had been put in jeopardy by the fact that she had talked to me.

work three

what

There is a small room full of people, with a set of three or four stairs acting as a stage or podium on which to perform. There have already been a few readings. The two performers come out of the back room behind the stairs wearing crude white helmets made of cardboard, making breathing sounds into plastic cups, descending the stairs and moving about among the audience. They read a script which is an altered version of the transcript from the first moon landing. In the script, there are no nouns, but instead strings of verbs, so that all of their encounters with this new environment are described through the actions of the objects.

how

I took the transcript of the moon landings, which is freely available online, and re-wrote it according to a different grammatical system, one which Jorge Luis Borges describes in his speculative short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, in which inhabitants of a fictional planet use a language without nouns. I made simple helmets out of cardboard and painted them with white emulsion paint. I asked my friend Bradley to perform with me and we rehearsed once in the space. I drank quite a lot of beer before the performance, as it doesn’t come naturally to me and I was quite nervous.

why

I was interested in how Borges’ story might change the way we conceive of objects. When you are made to describe an object purely with verbs it makes you think of it in terms of its relations to other things, its purpose. I had the idea of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin encountering not just a new physical space but a new system of language when they landed on the moon. I was thinking about how language frames the way we experience the world, and trying to portray that with a sense of absurdity. It was also an opportunity for me to step out of my comfort zone and take part in a performance.

[title]

The work uses its surroundings, but it is not context specific per se, it could be transferred to another location. At the top of a set of stairs (three flights, spiral) a speaker is hanging from the ceiling. It is light grey, the colour of floor paint in a standard exhibition space, suspended by a rope passed between two pulleys, attached to the ceiling at one end and the wall at the other. The speaker resembles a bell and plays a series of recordings of bells on a loop. As a viewer enters the block of flats and climbs the stairs, the sound of the bells reverberates around the space.

The recordings of bells were found on freesound.org, a website which hosts Creative Commons-licensed sounds uploaded by users. I took the first 100 sounds tagged with the word ‘bell’. The speaker was a tannoy speaker that I repurposed from a previous exhibition. I attached the speaker to a block of wood with bolts, and attached one of the pulleys to the wood, the other to the ceiling and one eyelet screw into the wall, another into the ceiling. I then used the rope to hoist up the speaker and ran audio cables along the rope from an amplifier. There was an iPod plugged into the amplifier, playing the sounds on loop.

It was quite a quick, intuitive piece made mostly with what I had available to hand. I was spending a lot of time on freesound exploring the range of sounds people were recording and uploading. The shape of the speaker resembling a bell was a cheap gag but I was also thinking about the ways in which new media act as containers for older ones, about the lineage of sound as a control mechanism (through the authority of the church through to the contemporary use of sound in the urban environment) and the interaction between digital and physical spaces.

Second Draft (after group feedback)

Steve's note to all: I suggest you cut the headings: what,  how & why. The text will hold up well.

Back to methods page:

http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/fineart/Reading,_Writing_%26_Research_Methods

1.

The work uses its surroundings, but it is not context specific per se, it could be transferred to another location. At the top of three flights of stairs in an apartment building, a speaker is hanging from the ceiling. It is light grey, the colour of floor paint in a standard exhibition space, suspended by a system of rope and pulleys. The speaker resembles a bell and plays a series of recordings of bells on a loop. As a viewer enters the block of flats and climbs the stairs, the sound of the bells reverberates around the space.

The recordings of bells were found on freesound.org, a website which hosts Creative Commons-licensed sounds uploaded by users. I took the first 100 sounds tagged with the word ‘bell’. The speaker was a tannoy speaker that I repurposed from a previous exhibition. I attached the speaker to the ceiling with a combination of pulleys, rope, wood and eyelet screws. I then used the rope to hoist up the speaker and ran audio cables along the rope from an amplifier. There was an iPod plugged into the amplifier, playing the sounds on loop.

It was quite a quick, intuitive piece made mostly with what I had available to hand. I was spending a lot of time on freesound exploring the range of sounds people were recording and uploading. The shape of the speaker resembling a bell was a simple visual pun. Through this I was thinking about the ways in which new media act as containers for older ones, about the lineage of sound as a control mechanism and the interaction between digital and physical spaces.

2.

The installation consists of minor alterations to the space and a short film projected onto a free-standing screen. The room already resembles an office and this sense is heightened by the addition of a grey carpet and blinds on the window. The projector is mounted on a reinforced ceiling tile. The film shows scenes shot mostly outdoors, with aspects of rural everyday life interspersed with shots of military structures, iconographic catholic statuary and other subjects. There is a voiceover spoken by a man and a woman which relates to the content of the images, sometimes obliquely and sometimes more explicitly.

I had a small amount of funding which allowed me to spend three weeks shooting on Uist, an island off the West coast of Scotland. Driving around in a small yellow Peugeot, I interviewed various people about their relationship to the military base and the history of the public sculptures of Madonna and Child which had been commissioned in response to it. Back in Glasgow, I spent further weeks editing the footage in the basement of Transmission, an artist-run space with some basic audio-visual facilities, and developed the voiceover from transcripts of the interviews. I installed the show with a little help from friends and the people who run the gallery.

I had been interested in the specific and complex history of Uist for some time and had visited previously to shoot footage for an earlier exhibition. There were many strands of this history in which I was interested, including the changing use of the landscape, ideas of the sublime and the deployment of public art simultaneously as devotional sculpture and a political statement. The original plan had been to include the interviews I conducted in the final film, but I decided to develop the voiceover instead after one of the interviewees contacted me to say that her job at the base had been put in jeopardy by the fact that she had talked to me.

3.

There is a small room full of people, with a set of three or four steps acting as a stage or podium on which to perform. Behind the steps there is another room, slightly elevated from the first and concealed by a black curtain. There have already been a few readings. The two performers come out of the back room behind the stairs wearing crude white helmets made of cardboard, making breathing sounds into plastic cups. They read a script, which is an altered version of the transcript from the first moon landing. In the script, there are no nouns, but instead strings of verbs, so that all of their encounters with this new environment are described through the actions of the objects. While reading, they descend the steps and move about among the audience, mimicking the astronauts’ descent of the ladder from their landing module onto the moon.

I took the transcript of the moon landings, which is freely available online, and re-wrote it according to a different grammatical system, one which Jorge Luis Borges describes in his speculative short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, in which inhabitants of a fictional planet use a language without nouns. I made simple helmets out of cardboard and painted them with white emulsion paint. I asked my friend Bradley to perform with me and we rehearsed once in the space. I drank a lot of beer beforehand, as performing doesn’t come naturally to me and I was quite nervous.

I was interested in how Borges’ story might change the way we conceive of objects. When you are made to describe an object purely with verbs it makes you think of it in terms of its relations to other things, its purpose. I had the idea of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin encountering not just a new physical space but a new system of language when they landed on the moon. I was thinking about how language frames the way we experience the world, and trying to portray that with a sense of absurdity. It was also an opportunity for me to step out of my comfort zone and take part in a performance.