Hotel Womb (2002)
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Or "sound art began before you were born"!
In utero, four and a half months after conception, the foetus begins to hear. Well before sight, smell, taste and touch are anything more than a vague hint of the surrounding world, sound is bombarding the unborn child. And a barrage of sound it is. Written for the Liquid Architecture 3 catalogue. Winner of the under-30 year old Award for excellence in post-graduate writing at the Co-op Bookshop Dialogica Awards 2002. |
My Silent Dream (2001)
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Hearing is functional, automatic, unavoidable, amateur, unpretentious and naive. Listening is a learned skill, selective, focused, concentrated, biased, snobbish and rare. We all become adept at tuning out sound because it is everywhere and unstoppable. But we are only ignoring it: it is still there. As part of my artistic practice I have tried to unlearn how to block sounds out, to notice it all, to become an aural sponge, to catalogue it all in my brain. I want to have sonic experiences consciously retrievable at any instant. It's going well, thanks, except for one thing. I can't sleep.
Published in LIKE, Art Magazine 15, Winter 2001 |
MTV + E2 = VJ (2000) |
Audiovisual media continues to labour under the cultural expectation to reproduce 'reality'. Even music video, while having come a long way from the literal documentation of musical performance, is still constrained by conventions requiring a face for a voice, a recognisable source for a sound. Electronic music video, however, is revelling in the opportunity to break theses shackles, and has in its turn contributed to the emergence of the VJ.
Published in LIKE, Art Magazine 12, Winter 2000 |