My artistic and professional career to date has acted as research into the technologies and techniques of creating spectacle. Many spectacles lead to a gaze of detached awe and leave little room for the viewers‘ own reading and imagination. I believe visual wonder can trigger surprise and puzzlement that can interrupt habitual judgments thereby liberating the viewer’s imagination. It is important to me that the viewer is aware of and actively complicit in their suspension of disbelief; something far more empowering than passive dazzlement.
I am interested in this quality of interactive looking that can be both analytical and receptive; analogue projection is a medium with which I can explore these different ways of seeing. After many years working with digital production and projection I became disillusioned with the qualities of the image and light whilst the technologies involved clouded the process of production. Through researching into early optical instruments and pre-cinema techniques such as magic lanterns, camera obscura, phatasmogoria and Megascopes, I rediscovered direct projection methods that had the power to create images that transfix the audience without pretence. Looking at these devices, I can sense the wonder felt at the first use of optical and electrical processes that we now take so for granted. The complex evolution of these technologies and our familiarity with them has led to detachment from the fundamental optical and perceptual processes at work. Episcopic or Opaque Object projection is the most direct projection technique possible as the projections exist in the present time with no recording or representation. The alchemical qualities of magnification, repetitive movement and focused light can transform mundane materials into transcendent projections that encourage the viewer to re-access their visual perception.
My practice has evolved, in part, through an active involvement in collectives such as The Cube Cinema and Blackout Arts and through VJing, film and production design work.
Exchange, 2009
A Rules & Regs commission in conjunction with AND Festival and The Bluecoat.
Two gallery visitors / audience members come to the installation at a time and are invited to wear a belt around their diaphragm area. The belts are then calibrated to the extremes of their breath expansion and contraction. The visitors are asked to enter into the installation room where they will be unaccompanied. As the visitors move into the space they come to realise that their breathing patterns are each controlling the intensity of one of the lights. As they breathe in the corresponding light fades up, as they exhale the light fades to darkness. With natural breaths the lights simply glow up and down but with a deep breath the room is filled with bright light. If both participants breathe out simultaneously the room becomes totally dark.
The participants are simultaneously the Audience and the Performers.Like many human processes, Exchange may lead to an experience that is at once sublime and ridiculous. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so closely related, that it is difficult to class them separately.The reciprocal relationships of internal & external, light & dark, and me & you often inform my work. These are complementary opposites are relative. - darkness defines light; your position helps identify my own; observation cannot be separated from imagination.
The relationship between the physical and the ethereal is also a reciprocal one. Breath, body, air and energy are the exchanges that are vital for life. For Exchange I wish to explore the sense of stretch as the links between these internal sensations and external stimulation are expanded and amplified.
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