process
TOWARDS
THE MATRIX. GRID CITY.
Giant cities paint a gloomy picture, of mass urban sprawl; the
megalopolis is spreading upwards and everywhere to house a population
of which 70 - 80% now lives in cites worldwide.
The problems with cities is that they seem to exist with laws
of their own. My artistic intervention tries to look at fragments
of our experience of cities, that make up the whole city. The
central city, is a place which appears out of control, but which
we try to control through design. The city as grids, and repetition,
can appear sublime or it can confuse and appear prison like.
In western art the grid is for painting, the grid is for the
city, the grid is the structure of western art. This grid is
ever expanding to cover the whole surface, growing and crawling
to the edges. The fascination of cities are both their similarities
and differences. Familiar forms, identities and sounds are common
to all cities, and yet each have special forms that separate
and identity particular places and spaces. These online works
represent spaces, they are idealized spaces. I donÌt
see Îthe central cityÌ, as a simulation. In fact,
I am not aiming or particularly interested in simulation. I
view the final evolution of the project as a experience, an
online internet experience, which can be viewed inside the white
cube of the box which is the computer. The framework, the grid,
that contains this work is the computer and the internet. Images
of maps redrawing and reprocessing themselves. This allows the
city a perpetual evolution, no single similar path need be followed.
My initial response in the central city project for example
was to deconstruct a language of the urban and city environment,
and then to build it back up as an art image to try to constitute
both a new form and new meaning. By placing oneself in the middle
of this particular structure, the meaning or the aesthetic experience
is only encountered when you decide to move from any one place
to the next. I use these small fragments as rhythms, to interact
with the next part, and evolve into something new. These parts
are cells, or parts of a whole that generate itself. The nature
of the sounds and noise of cities varies in tone and language.
A background rhythm can come into the foreground. It mixes itself,
and evolves. The city is its own music, constantly evolving,
a beautiful composition of squeaks, clanks, and pulses. We are
familiar but distracted as it bombards our conscious slipstream.
Yet the sounds grow, move, die, fade and shift. They are out
there all the time.The children, the cars, the drills, the animals,
the micro sounds, the sounds of our bodies, the insides of our
souls.
I am interested in the sounds of specific places, and how the
sounds reflect this identity and re-impose characteristics back
onto the location or environment. Cities all have specific identities,
and found sound can give us clues to the people that inhabit
these spaces, as well as provoking us and stimulating our senses
in a musical way. The sounds of language impose a rhythm that
the visual narrative can interact with. The intention within
newer sections of the central city, is to create an audio visual
experience that evokes place, both as literal description but
also developed musical composition. These are the ideas that
are informing my new ÎsoundmapsÌ series , and ÎsoundcityÌ.
Recent pieces exist, that the ÏuserÓ has to control
of and can make them work by movement. |
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