( currently a holding place for bits which may ultimately end up elsewhere )

sound music noise loops (generative) layering text work made for audiences and not (incidental audiences) collaborations 'curated' shows technology (geek notes)

sound music noise

it may perhaps be seen as an inherent problem that there should be an emphasis on sound music noise in works being presented as part of a doctorate in visual arts however it needs to be recognized that in multimedia (not to mention film and video) that sound and image are nearly always found together and when effectively used together complement and reinforce each other

in my view that it is always possible to say something about the relationship between a sound or music and image/s even if it is only that there is intentionally or unintentionally no relationship

i like to work with sound and music which evoke a strong visual response but in their own right without being designed as sound tracks

often i will use appropriated elements in my sound work which are severed from the image/s they belong to because i find the images they cause the listener to imagine more interesting than the 'originals'

need to include something on dissonance discord resolution silence

loops

i am particularly interested in the use of loops in sound - particularly when loops of different lengths are used together which allows different relationships between the loops to emerge over time - as so often happens in the arts i was under the illusion that this idea with which i have been working for a decade or more was my own unique invention but of course it is what brian eno calls "generative music" and extensive work had been done in this field by steve reich and others

in the sad men i had also began experimenting with looping digital video in this way - this is more fully implemented in the ana suite

layering

a favourite technique which i find myself returning to again and again as i work across different mediums over time - i find it not only aesthetically satisfying but it is such an appropriate methaphor in that we are often listening to or looking at things through other things and something interesting can happen when we are able to refocus our listening or looking and tune in to these layers (cf john cage)

text and language

I am interested in Òuntying the bonds of language and opening up new social, analytical and aesthetic practices andÉ offering alternatives to the sense of ethical and aesthetic abdication and intellectual prostitution (...) associated with those artists and theorists preoccupied with academic fashion and with the mediocrity of mass-culture and the media marketsÉÓ
Zurbrugg, N. Postmodernism & Ethical Abstraction (Felix Guattari Interview) Photofile 39 July 1993

i have a dreadful secret : i was a poet and a writer for a long time before i was a visual artist (just as i was a musician/composer for a long time before i was a sound artist) - but there is something ugly about the phrase i am a poet and yes i do write but i like to use this text for art ends rather than writerly ends - i am an artist using text (or sound) rather than a poet (or a musician/composer)

but i have a great deal of respect for writers (and musician/composers) : recently i found myself in a room in which a television happened to be on showing a programme about the australian poet john forbes of who i had never heard and it was one of those experiences which makes tv in spite of everything such a wonderful medium - in the the same way as radio - all of a sudden a song comes on which you have never heard before and you are absolutely transfixed and if it wasn't for that radio…

but there is something about text like there is something about music about sound which is so immediate that it moves me beyond description there is something about a word or two or three

and it happens rarely and for me - as one for whom english is my second language it has only happened maybe on one or two occasions in english : but i can connect with a writer instantaneously in a flash through a very few of his or her words