Blog to document my ongoing research into the transformation of the mundane and revealing areas of unconciously collaborative activity. as part of my MA Fine Art site and aarchive course at UCLAN.
In the beginning was the word AND
I was recently invited to participate in a group show at the 24/7 project space run by the Gooden gallery on Vyner st in East London.
“Light & Dark/Motion & Stasis” was curated by Chris Meigh-Andrews who is a professor at UCLAN in Preston, head of EDAU (Electronic and Digital Art Unit) and has written a book about the History of Video Art which he himself played a signifacant role in.
Needless to say I was thrilled and slightly daunted by the idea of showing in a prominent gallery and finding myself amongst such illustrious company.
Each artist was given a week to display their work in the space which is viewable from the street much like a window display in a high st shop. You can look but you cant touch. I wanted to capitalise on this aspect of the space as I found it intirguing
The piece I ended up making was based on a screenprint which took the first chapter of genesis as its starting point, highlighting the word AND and putting a line through the rest of the text – this came about whilst wondering if you could turn the bibal into a logic gate, using the AND, NOT, OR, NOR found in computing and Boolean algebra. The title of the piece is from the book of John and i’ve removed the comma to change the meaning.
For the installation I used an mp3 of the King James bible which I filtered so it sounded like mumbling or a loud TV playing next door and created a film which flashed up the word “AND” synced to wherever it appeared in the audio. This appeared on a monitor suspended in the middle of the space facing away from the audience reflected back via a mirror on the opposite wall. I was fortunate enough when sourcing the mirror to find a 3 in 1 mirror in a local charity shop. This meant at certain angles you could see 3 reflections of the word and provided a reference to the holy trinity and the possibility of parallel universes.
The installation was viewable 24/7 and at night the lights in the space were switched off so the only illumination came from the brief flashes of the words AND.
As well as being interested in how the viewer could access the piece I really wanted to provide some architecture for the space which was roughly a white cube. Using three inch black elastic I turned the gallery into a Hypercube (a 3 dimensional representation of a four dimensional cube), to further reference my interest in science and the beginnings of the universe. The structure feels , I think, as though it is expanding.
From the outside you could hear the low bass rumblings of the audio and I accented the word AND with a simple electronic beep that punctuated the mumbled text.
One of the interesting things I found out whilst making the piece was that the King James Bible was intentionally more rhytmical than previous versions.
It was a great experience working with Chris and the Gooden gallery.. I’ve now got to write a short text describing it.. which I find difficult but I think writing these posts helps.
Automatic Piano News
I’m really excited about the prospect of using a player piano to play my chewing gum composition.
Last week I went to have another look at a piano that was given to Susan Walsh , Artist and tutor at UCLAN. After a few months wondering why it didn’t work even though the mechanism seemed fine she told me it had suddenly started working.
Of course when I got there it wouldn’t work and it continued not working for an hour. After much fiddling and prodding and chin stroking we noticed the part that the piano roll moves over, which is a bit like an 88 note mouth organ, wasn’t seated correctly and after a gentle push the room was filled with sound and we sat grinning stupidly whilst playing the tune over and over again.
I’ve spent the rest of the week looking into the history of the automatic piano which has been fascinating (including a format battle to rival the VHS/Betamax struggle) and contacted a workshop which makes piano rolls from midi files.
So I’m really at the point of simply getting on with it and transcribing the gum into notes. This is quite laborious.
At the weekend I went along to UCLAN’s Production line 2011. This is the final show for 3rd years on the BA Music practice course. There were some great pieces performed and some intriguing installations with plenty of crossovers and similarities to some of the concerns and debates within fine art. I was particularly impressed with an installation that included prayers from all the worlds major religions layered on top of each other and a video piece by a second year student exploring language and music in an interpretation os Ginsbergs ‘Howl’ which was described as a reaction to Steven Pinkers assertion that music is auditory Cheesecake.
The Final performance involved most of the students and was a composition created by them and invited artist Andy Chapel. It was brilliant. It began with all the musicians spread around the media factory, 3 floors with an open stairwell and included people rattling peanuts, playing guitars, baning drums, tambourines, tapping things etc. The musicians then led the audience into 3 interconnected theatres where they started doing some musical exercises in groups and after 10 mins everyone congregated in the main theatre and were treated to a 30 min performance of Samba drumming, 2 bagpipes with drummer, piano, guitars, 2 drum kits a barbershop quartet and a finale of those tubes that you spin round to make a noise. I loved it.
Anyway whilst i was there I managed to speak to a few musicians about my chewing gum composition and have enlisted 2 so far to help write and perform the piece. A guitarist called Andy whose just finished the first year of music practice and was involved in some of the performances and Carl guitarist/drummer who just finished the course and who I’d met at a live painting event at a dubstep night organised by 158 projects.
I’m off to see a saxophone quartet perfom on Friday and am looking forward to meeting them and the composer after the show. I don’t really have a fixed idea of which instruments I would like in the piece and it seems to be growing organically as I meet different musicians. i think a saxophone would be a great addition though so hopefully they’ll be interested in coming on board.
I have started developing a project to transform the distribution of chewing gum splats on the pavement into a piece of music. I’m creating visual scores of a walk through Preston with video and photography. Wherever the chewing gum intersects an imaginary piano keyboard a note is recorded. i am hoping to collaborate with a small group of musicians to develop the project further with a view to using other elements of the walk as inspiration for the score – such as the intersection of paving stones, textures, cigarette butts etc.
The project is a development from I print I made of a table which was used for cutting paper. Its full of cuts and scratches and I wondered if it was possible to print it. After inking up the table and taking a relief print onto a sheet of newsprint all the visible sctarches were there plus many others that coudn’t be seen.
On reflection the print revealed areas of unconciously collaborative activity and is a document of the use of this table by hundreds of people over many years.
Whilst thinking about this print I had been looking for other places that contained something similar. Which is when I noticed the chewing gum. This seemed to contain many of the ideas I’d found in the table.
Initially I painted the chewing gum outside the PR! gallery in Preston bright pink as an installation for an exhibition. Further reflection led to seeing the distribution as a musical score such as you might find on a computer sequencer or automatic piano which these sequencers are based on. As a producer of electronic music its been easy to see the potential for translating this into a score which could be performed either by a small group or an orchestra.
So the plan at the moment is to begin working with a small group of musicians and use a walk in town as the inspiration for a collaborative work. I’ll be spending the next few weeks working on the visual score and hopefully enlisting some collaborators.
David Henckel is a contemporary audio-visual artist, experienced in leading complex public art projects, which involve multiple partners. He works with emerging & established artists, local communities, commercial organisations and civic institutions to produce immersive installations and experiences.
He has a multi-disciplinary practice often creating work that fuses Science, politics of space, the nature of sound, community engagement and the audience as players within the work. The installation Venus in Sole Visa, brought together artists, physicists, musicians, a visiting composer, NASA and a village Community during the 2012 Transit of Venus.
In 2012 he was awarded Axis Webs MA Stars and appointed as Artist in Residence at The University of Central Lancashire, where he developed The Sun at Night – a dynamic public art installation, which allows audiences to experience a year in the life of the Sun utilising images from NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory. It was shown in Preston’s covered market in 2013 seen on the BBC’s Stargazing Live 2014 and formed the lead commission for Light Night Leeds in 2015.
He exhibited with 0point3recurring (an artistic collective) at the Bluecoat, Liverpool, as part of Portfolio North West and was one of five Lancashire-based artists commissioned by In Certain Places to develop new temporary public artwork, which was presented during the Preston Guild celebrations in September 2012.
In 2018 / 2019 David is working on a residency with the Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound – part of the NATUR project run by Curated Place and hosted by ELEFANT in Stavanger, Norway.
He is currently exploring collaborative and experimental work in an ongoing project with Victoria Johnson as part of ‘The Window People” – who seek to uncover new relationships between cooking, eating, playing and listening.
