JOREILLY

River Abstraction - assessment 3

This composition is the result of ongoing experimentation bending data to make various work that extends the constraints of media technology and design. Deceptively simple, this work has been composed by dragging the mov file from the work below into a music software program and converting it to midi.

Using a basic sine wave, I have applied minimal editing including tuning to a key.  The space of the piece, the intervals, velocity and the silence in between notes were laid down by the conversion of the mov to wav. In effect the below piece wrote the above piece. This event was arrived at purely through experimentation and unconventional use of digital software. Conceptually It is an ongoing living project that has many iterations, including a text score, a folk song, movement, video and sound. Influences here include Brian Eno early and recent works.

I am interested in composing and presenting text scores that create encounters between humans and the environment. I am experimenting with mediating my text scores to include audio, video, image and printed material. This process involves exploring words, actions, body, sound, visuals, glitch and a merging of these components to create something more than a text score. I am curious to discover the potential of the natural environment as a studio space and what a text score can potentially offer experientially to explore working in this studio space. I am drawn to creating representations of a revere for the natural world; fragile, mysterious, forceful and beautiful.  Within the realms of hypermodernity, I want to represent and feature a preservation of the natural world as a refuge free from design influenced by technology but paradoxically using digitisation to create my work. I am at the very beginning of this exploration and have been working with a text score I composed earlier in the year, inspired by filming underwater in a river out west of Sydney.

River Piece

Dive into the river and sing like you are water

Jacqui O'Reilly Autumn 2018

I have continued to use this text score as pivotal to my research and practice and it has led me to the work of Annea Lockwood, NZ born sound artist now based in the US. Lockwood started developing a River Archive in the 60s, extensively recording the sounds of rivers worldwide. She was interested in how environmental sounds and bodies interact, inspired by an old Peruvian tradition, where people who were emotionally disturbed were taken to riverbanks for a period of time to restore.  Lockwood talks about the influence of growing up around wild NZ rivers and rich environmental sounds as the origins of her interests. Her practice developed over many years into a mapping of significant histories of sites from the Danube in Hungary through to gorges running through the Transylvanian Alps. She has a number of releases from this work including A Sound Map of the Hudson River (1989), A Sound Map of the Danube (2008) both on Lovely Records and A Sound Map of the Housatonic River on 3leaves (2012).

Lockwood is strongly drawn to the textures of moving water sounds and explains:

They’re very intricate textures, all sorts of rhythmic patterns and unpredictabilities and seemingly random sounds emerging and disappearing, and layers of pitches - very complex. (Rodgers, 2010, p 117)

On a recent trip to NZ I took recordings of the Waikato River at a place known as the Huka Falls, where a ravine of hard volcanic rock narrows the river considerably. 220,000 litres of water roars through this ravine per second. As a child growing up in NZ, I knew of the Huka Falls as a place where it was common for people to commit suicide, the binary opposite of the Peruvian tradition. In experimenting with the material I collected from the site, I wanted to explore the sound patterns and unpredictabilities Lockwood talks about, as a representation of the force of the environment and the tragedy of people who are compelled to end their lives. I worked with the filtering of frequencies to draw out this representation, focusing on the lower and mid range sounds within. 

I also experimented with glitching my material, researching and manipulating hex codes to disrupt the transmission of media, and extend the design constraints of the technologis I’m using.

One - experimenting with lower frequencies

Two - experimenting with lower and mid range frequencies

Three - experimenting with data bending (initial River Piece, Autumn 2018)

This experimentation and research resulted in the final work River Piece 2 presented at the top of this post.

Bibliography

Camper, F. (2003). Acts of Seeing: Stan Brakhage, 1933 - 2003 (Digital catalogue). Retrieved from http://www.fredcamper.com/Brakhage/FC.html

Fuhrmann, M. (2009). Nature, Art and Structure. Germany: Ullmann Medien GmbH

Fluxus is not: – a moment in history or – an art movement. Fluxus is: – a way of doing things, – a tradition, and – a way of life and death.

I have created a work that represents the relationship between humans and the environment, using a number of concepts and references.

I photographed three mountains on a recent trip to New Zealand. These images have been processed into black and white thumbnails and used repeatedly to create a grid. This is representative of the competing forces of the natural world and the industrial world.

In nature we see many patterns, they draw us in, to immerse us in the wonder of our ecology. Squiggles on trees, blades of grass, trees along the skyline, light and shadows on stones, rocks and canyons, ant tracks in sand, all have patternation. This orders and frames the organic beauty we are immersed in, and I have used repetition to inspire a representation of this immersion.

This repetition is also representative of our built environment and our online existence. In combination with black and white thumbnails, the repetition offers a highly processed look, almost like the negatives of film. This references our mediated hypermodern fast paced lives.

The conflict of these two opposing concepts is the context for the text score I have written on the poster. It references the work of Yoko Ono, who authored many text scores that inspired reflection on our existence, our actions and our relationship to the world around us as well as her practice as an activist.

My text score references the idiom, ‘you can’t move a mountain’, and I am making a comment on the need to live in harmony with our natural environment, as exploiting it for capital gain is destructive and unsustainable. Stopping still in the face of this reality, is not an easy proposition, like climbing a mountain itself, however, my text score implies a slowing down and contemplative approach is required in order to align more ethically and sustainably with the natural world.

This video work is an assemblage of photography, video and sound including field recordings and a range of sampling and modern synthesis techniques. The material was gathered from documentation about the project Emerge Outside, from 2010. I devised and coordinated this project with regional artist Randolf Reimann (Tralala Blip). 

I have explored editing and documentation as critical aspects of my art practice through producing this work. This has enabled me to compound various modes of apprehension in order to point out some key elements of the project. I used the relationship between image and sound to emphasise and highlight these key points and to share the experience in a vibrant way.

Emerge Outside was a project that created increased opportunities for participation and access to sound art, digital music making, performance and cultural engagement. It achieved this for myself and for a range of other people. In this video work however, I did not want to emphasise increased access as the main point of the project. I wanted to play with ideas of difference and innovation through a particular aesthetic. The project itself offered much of this aesthetic, however my editing of the documentation through experimentation, translated this aesthetic into a new visibility and story, which has value as a work in and of itself.

I commenced an editing process for a past project called Emerge Outside, standing back from the experience of the project itself to experiment with bringing together different elements of content to make a resolved work, instead of just a record of the process.

I wanted to find a way to play with and reinvent the project through my editing and documentation as well as provide interesting evidence that it happened. 

I worked with sound, images, video and went between each source of material in a process of experimentation to develop ideas and inspiration. My assemblage took on a life of its own, that enabled me to develop a final work.

River Piece

Dive into the river and sing like you are water

Jacqui O'Reilly Autumn 2018

I’ve been experimenting with under water environments as a studio space. I became interested in this through my work, Transformation through materiality, when I achieved some interesting outcomes from experimenting with light underwater in confined space to create material. 

Continuing with this interest and reflecting on concepts of repetition and editing, I worked with various images taken underwater and paired them with sound samples, to produce a small clip that inspired a text score. This text score was influenced by the work of Yoko Ono and her conceptual art and instruction paintings from the 1960′s

Transformation through materiality

Through creating material from the space inside a box I have produced a conceptual video art work, representative of an inner space within ourselves. While subjecting the box to everyday activities and environments I collected audio and video recordings from its interior.

This work voices the way we can lock up our inner experiences deep inside during challenging times. The trauma of war, poverty, displacement, natural disasters or even just information overload in the digital age and the pressures of capitalism, can trigger a type of self preservation through inner containment. My work is a representation of this space.

It also reflects my appreciation for the musicality present in the unexpected, uncovered through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Experimenting with my own highly processed vocal samples, as well as field recordings and video, I examine the minutiae of grain, tone and texture. 

This investigation is influenced by the revolutionary ideas of artists like Pauline Oliveros, Stan Brakhage and Christian Thompson and my desire to override a typical world view, to revitalise the everyday and attune to the implicit.

Experiment #1

Experiment #2

Experiment #3

T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S . through . materiality .

I am experimenting with creating material from the space inside a box. I will subject the box to everyday activities and environments and collect audio and video recordings from its interior while doing so. This material will form the basis of a conceptual work that represents an internal space within ourselves. It voices the way we can lock up our inner experiences in challenging times. The trauma of war, poverty, displacement, natural disasters or even just information overload in the digital age and the pressures of capitalism, trigger a type of self preservation through containment deep inside. I am experimenting with this perceived space proposing it may be similar to the dark and empty space inside a box. 

Image 1: Box at computer

E X P E R I M E N T A T I O N

experiment to have new thoughts about things and to have new experiences with materials. intermingle aesthetic experience with everyday experience to generate work.

the concept of a studio environment is not a room or enclosed space. it’s any environment used for making. this can foster work that reaches beyond aesthetics to embed social, political and cultural contexts, integrating practice into a broader landscape rather than in the confines of a room alone. the transience of an unfixed studio seems complimentary to a transdisciplinary art practice being responsive and adaptive, shifting fields and frames of reference across mediums and art forms. the nature of working in this way opens up possibilities for practice-led research and experimentation. to generate and work through an idea, or a question, or most likely a problem, learning and engaging with much in the process.