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.
