Installations and Events
GROUND TRUTHSwith Rose Butler
as part of a group exhibition faethm
Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield 2025. Sound & 16mm Film. (Photography: Rose Butler)
frequencies
Frequencies was conceived as a live expanded-cinema event and was developed from the sound installation Frequency (q.v.below). It is concerned with the sensory experience of the interaction of slowly changing frequencies of sound and light and phase shifts of beats and flicker between two loudspeakers and two projections.
Frequencies was produced using two home-made single string electric guitars each with a motorised device. One runs a 19 minute cycle and the other a 9½ minute cycle, during which the pitch is shifted by around one semi-tone producing harmonics, beats and dissonance. The colour of light, centred on green, is changed synchronously with the sound, using filter wheels in front of two 16mm projectors.
The guitar strings were played with motorised plectrums at around 8-12 beats per second. Projection was at 24fps with external fans producing additional flicker at frequencies similar to the guitars.
The resulting images were projected and superimposed onto a back projection screen and filmed with a digital camera. Sound was played through two loudspeakers and recorded directly with two microphones. The separation of the loudspeakers in the space of the screening affecting the acoustic phenomena experienced.
2019 FREQUENCY (sound installation)
Algomech Festival DINA Sheffield 19th May
Frequency is a sound installation of two constructed single-string electric guitars with electric motors that tension and de-tension the strings very slowly.
They are played with motorised spinning plectrums (as frequencies above). Speakers to be positioned on opposite sides of the space. The 'instruments' at the front of the space. The work has a 19 minutes cycle. An installation of slowly shifting drone of harmonics dissonance and beatings.
Frequency
frequencies
Frequencies is a live expanded-cinema event using two 16mm projectors with electro-mechanical devices and stereo sound. It is concerned with the sensory experience of the interaction of slowly changing colours of overlapping and flickering projections, and of slow frequency shifts of sound causing beats, harmonics and dissonance between the loudspeakers.
ROOTED OUT 2017 (with Jo Millett) 16mm projection and sound event.
extract: https://vimeo.com/254705747
Rooted Out is a projection event that attempts to create a full colour image in 3D from monochrome film of UK and EU flags being waved. Two ukuleles will be played live, with a motorised plectrum through two speakers. The work will teeter precariously on the edge of successfully achieving its aim with a twin projection through a revolving shutter of red and green filters (the Kinemacolor process and 3D without the glasses). The likelihood of faithful colour reproduction is fickle, but as with the question of feeling European and British, it is not a black & white issue but is a question of what you want to see as much as what is constructed.
With thanks to: Isobel Haysom & Gwen Gawthrop
YARD NOISES IN for Interplay CMR - Inland Festival Redruth 2014
RING NOISES IN for embedded Enys House Penryn 2014
SEA NOISE IN Performance Transistion Residency, Newlyn Gallery 2013
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IN (OUT) : OUT (IN) for In From the Out Blank Space Gallery Manchester 2011
DRIP MUSIC & SOLO FOR VIOLIN, VIOLA OR CONTRABASS George Brecht 1959/62 in 4 weeks 33 hours final show CMR gallery Redruth 2011
Participant in JEFF KEEN GAZAPOCALYPSE – Return to the Golden Age (member of Albino Ray Band) The Tanks, Tate Modern 2011
OXIDE II & III Ben Gwillam + REMOTE + FILM NOISE screening, discussion and improvisation at No.W.here London 2011
Performance/improvisation with Pete McPartlan, Empty Orchestra Eastside Projects, Birmingham (part of The Event) 2011
FUNCTIONAL ACTION (Tony Sinden) with Alan Baker & David Cunningham, Tate Modern in Time Revealing Truth: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Tamara Krikorian and Tony Sinden 2009
"... highlight of the night was David Cunningham (a former member of seventies one-hit wonder band/collective Flying Lizards), Rob Gawthop, and Alan Baker, performing a 1977 sound piece from Sinden’s Functional Action series. They each rubbed a couple of pots together and the resulting music was a groove sensation!" Stewart Home (blog/archives/2805).
DUBPLATE/DINNER DANCE Menu For Murmur The Chapman Gallery University of Salford 2010
Dinner plate played with a fork on a turntable 33/45rpm
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DISTANT DRUMS Shaking Hands With Ghosts Site specific Installation Dartington Estate 2010
REMOTE 16mm/audio/DVD Installation, The Gallery, Dartington 2009
North Sea, Humber Mouth, Humber Estuary filmed over three days summer 2008 on 16mm film, triple exposure. Sea, wind and steel table-top electric guitar played by the wind, distortion-pedal, two distant speakers; recorded in stereo on mini-disc on beach by North Sea. Sound & picture transferred & refilmed onto digital video 2009
MOVING AIR installation, The Gallery, Dartington 2009
electric motors, steel line, Meccano,
active speakers, microphones 2009.
ON-SPURN Residency with Jo Millett, Rick Welton, Pete McPartlan, Sabine Biele and Bob Levene; Spurn Point, East Yorkshire, 2008.
O2 MILE QUADRUPLEX Pete McPartlan, The Boathouse, Hull. AV improvisation 2008
MEGAPHONES Small Structures (site specific installation) Architecture Week, ARC Hull. (with Bob Levene & Espen Jensen as Hull Art Lab) 2006
CINEMATIC EVENTS (2005) Slack Video, The Lamp, Hull, Launch of NowHere Lab London
QUIET DRUMS TO LOUD SPEAKERS (installation) Standpoint Gallery, Hoxton, London. 2000> a funny thing happened on the way to the future Brodrick Gallery, Hull School of Art & Design 21st October - 15th December 2017
NOISE TRANSMISSIONS 2.2 - 5 mins, The New Hull School of Art, Hull, Timebase, Hull, Standpoint Gallery, Hoxton London 1999
SWITCH-ON PHONE-IN TUNE-OUT Live radio broadcast for telephone and three radio receivers. (Hearing is Believing - Video Positive, Liverpool) 1995
PERCUSSION, VIDEO & NOISE TRANSMISSIONS (with Gina Czarnecki), HTBA members commission, ROOT 97, Warehouse 6. 1997.
WHAT THE EYE DOESNT SEE Post Industrial Studies No 1 - Coal & Transport (with Mike Stubbs) - North Woolwich Railway Station and Old Station Museum (Rivercrossings / Camerawork) 1993