Visual Music

For a long time now, I have been fascinated by Visual music and during my research and  fellowship at the University of Oxford, I sought links to the Centre of Visual music, an organisation in LA which looks after many pioneering work by (hitherto neglected) artists such as Oskar Fischinger and Jordan Belsen and Mary Ellen Bute. Collaborative Performances across art forms have been a large part of my practice over the past 15 years, these stills here are from performances that took place at the Horse Hospital London, and Newcastle Univesity Hall in 2016. The performances used light working between sheets of translucent material, connecting gesture with colour and sounds, as Julia Mehretu says”driving the eye wild and embracing the chaos the world”  through sound and colour with turntables, improvised vocal with electronics and violin.

The Space allowed me to work freely around the audience and the polyeurethene was lit from behind which created another dimension and drama to the mark making and gestures. On occasions I worked in between, echoing the hand manipulated films used by the visual music pioneers a deliberate reference and providing continuity with the films that had been shown before.