I’ve been back in the ‘real’ world for a week scince completing my residnecy at Outlandia. I’ve been reflecting slowly on the next stage for the matieral that I collected and worked on. For me, next will be compliling video edits as ‘video sketchbook’ material from my experiments.
It’s funny but these feel like they are completely contained in themselves as experiments but at the same time, they don’t feel like compeltely resolved works. Hopefully they will lead me to another place, a new and natural progression from these small works to something more concrete.
My audio however does feel resolved as field recordings. The challenge for these is to be able to recognise if they can stand alone as recordings or if they call for an additional mode of representation.
The weather was humid and clear, I could listen and see far. I walked and spider web strands brushed by my cheek.
Some more interventions in a great studio day. Moving forward from the recordings I created on my first day, I took some ‘tools’ with me including string and a pair of tiny scissors.
Process-led works begin to emerge without a strong preconceived outcome – much different from my usual working processes where I hold a fully-formed idea in mind before I begin. This does link with how I make though, as I have a clear image and some sound content I want to capture before I begin recording my footage. I used what objects I had brought to the studio on my first day.
I collected more sound recordings to start to think about developing a short audio release documenting my time at Outlandia through field recordings. I hope to collaborate with artists’ to work on supporting drawings and images for the CD / LP release.
I was hampered greatly by the rain and wet weather today. Unfortunately that is one of the issues when working with digital equipment – if it’s raining you can’t record your material, especially if you are field recording or working out of doors.
I thought best to save my equipment and work in Outlandia the following day as damp electronic equipment would have led to disaster.
Today was contemplative to help decide how best to use the dry day that is forecast for tomorrow.
Welcome to the West of Scotland.
I am using the time in residence at Outlandia to build on my previous body of work by documenting techniques, strategies and games I invent and construct to measure the duration of my stay in Glen Nevis. Such play is informed from limited materials such as those I carry to Outlandia and those I find within the landscape – such as rocks, trees, vegetation, paths, e.t.c – and is framed through seriousness, the mundane, nonsense, failure and success.
First I sat down to listen and contemplate my new and refreshing surroundings. On the walk up to Outlandia, I encountered images like snapshots and sound like water droplets. I gathered items that caught my curiosity to begin to record my first material.
Inspired by Kurs Scwitter’s Dada Mertzbau, I built small columns out of the items I collected and recorded them defying the pull of gravity, until my interventions caused them to collapse. There is beauty in this process and it’s simpplicity that I find arresting – it hints at the inpsiration of Outlandia and the curiosity and processes that surround Scwitter’s works.
I gathered 2 sticks, 12 pine cones (of various sizes and from 3 differnet trees) and 7 stones (of diffreent types and colours).
Do things because you can.
Failure is everything.
