6 Days in Liverpool

Exhibition, R&D

I was up in Liverpool again recently for a 6 day residency as part of the art tech, boundary pushing Syndrome project curated and produced by Nathan Jones.
‘Choros’ was a collaboration between myself and sound artist Stefan Kazassoglou of Kinicho. Artist and poet, Steven Fowler gave a martial-arts derived performance for the opening event. The venue was 24 Kitchen St which is a fascinating project in its own right – a constantly evolving arts-centric space at the very beating heart of Liverpool’s Baltic Quarter, full of positiveness and an admirable can-do attitude.
kitchen-st

Inspired by a visit to the venue and at all times spurred on by Nathan Jones, Stefan Kazassoglou and myself set ourselves the brief of creating a ‘roomstrument’ – an interactive space capable of responding visually and sonically to physical presence and movement, similar to the way in which a musical instrument responds to the physicality of being played. The roomstrument should be ‘playable’ by an individual or by a group. It would be an experimental piece designed to make performers of participants by stimulating and rewarding performative play. The name Choros came about as an anglicisation of the Greek word ‘Koros’ which happens to mean both dance and room – the synonymity appealed to us.

With the benefit of continued encouragement and support from Syndrome, we specified 3 projectors, 3 screens, 3 Kinect cameras and an 8 speaker ambisonic sound system to create a kind of open sided cube that would form the basis of an interactive space. In the end this relatively complex rig was constructed with a minimum of fuss by the Syndrome team and suppliers and we found ourselves facing a technically exacting set-up with plenty of calibrated communication required between video and audio processing. After the inevitable teething issues, we kickstarted our creative workflow and got a basic interactive audiovisual framework up and running on day 4 of the residency which only gave us 1 day to tweak before the incredible opening performance featuring Steven Fowler. The following day we opened up the work to the wider public…

spec

At the centre of the installation was a lit ‘hotspot’ which we invited visitors to use a starting point to explore the interactive space. By reaching out towards or approaching any of the 3 screens from this hotspot, a series of ‘control cubes’ was revealed, each of which triggered a sound in respective ambisonic audio space. Thus a control cube in the bottom left part of a screen triggered an audio element spatially placed at the corresponding location. For the opening performance we used a series of Japanese martial arts-inspired vocal samples recorded by Steven Fowler himself.

Subsequent sound sets featured cello samples specially recorded by Stefan Kazassoglou and vocal samples from 20th Century philosopher and mathematician Alfred Korzybski discussing how abstraction creates an illusion of reality.

Moving around quickly inside the space triggered a rapid sucession of audio elements, resulting in a dramatic if slightly overwhelming mix of near-simultaneous sounds issuing from various locations in 3D space. Conversely, moving more carefully and identifying the points at which audio elements triggered gave visitors the chance to learn how to ‘play’ the work more as an actual ‘roomstrument’.

This experimental piece was a great success judging by the feedback and comments from visitors. As an artistic collaboration, I am sure it has inspired each one of us involved both at an individual and collaborative level. Certainly Stefan Kazassoglou and myself are keen to develop the ideas and techniques at the heart of Choros…

Massive thanks to all who helped and supported in spirit or in person.

Bye-bye Liverpool until next time…liverpool

The after-glow of Luminescence

Exhibition

Luminescence was installed at firstsite for 3 days in April. Due to the crescendo of effort required to pull the project together followed soon after by Easter holidays and the beginning of a new term, it has take me a little while to get round to writing up my thoughts and observations.

Not long after I wrote the last post discussing my previous show Electricus, I finally got hold of a Kinect sensor. Having worked exclusively with webcam video input for the last year or more, it was a good time to cross the line into the world of the depth image and positional information. I’m particularly happy that I really ‘maxed out’ the webcam and learned so much from operating within the constraints of rgb video over an extended period before coming in from the cold. The way I see it there are two main directions to go with the (version 1) Kinect – skeleton tracking which provides fine control for a restricted number of participants or exploitation of the depth image which just gives z information in a grainy black and white low-res feed. The first approach sounds way more groovy right? But the second approach is to my mind essentially more open in the sense that it can be used to set up multi-participant interactivity with the minimum of calibration or initialisation. I really like the idea of an ‘uninvigilated’ interactive space as opposed to the invigilated version in which perhaps only 2 are allowed to approach the sensor at a time. But of course, it’s all a matter of fitness for purpose and I’m sure I’ll be maxing out the skeleton tracking functionality before long!

So what of the depth image? For a start, using a threshold-type filter it is simple to set up an active zone in front of the sensor thereby knocking out the background or any other unwanted objects. For Luminescence, I developed functionality that locates objects/people and draws lines around them in an approximation of their silhouette. Because the lines are drawn using a cluster of points located on the edge of a person/object’s shape, it is straight forward enough to calculate the average position of a cluster which roughly equates to the centre of a drawn shape. Once more than one shape occurs, the piece joins them together dramatically. So an individual might dwell at the edge of the active zone and experiment by putting only parts of the body (eg hands, face) into the active zone and seeing how these all connect up. A group of participants might just jump around in front of the screen and watch how the connections between their respective body shapes light the screen up.
Visitor response was very positive. I was in the installation space or close by for the duration of the event at firstsite which gave me ample opportunity to observe, chat with and generally appreciate participant interaction with the piece.

mumandson-simple-800-600
mumandson-800-600
spec-side

From Electricus to Luminescence

Exhibition

Electricus is dead, long live Electricus! Well not dead, just put to bed for now while I start to work on my next show ‘Luminescence’ to be exhibited at firstsite in April.

Putting on a show at Ipswich Town Hall was certainly a memorable experience. Although Gallery 3 feels slightly off the beaten track, it’s such a hugely impressive room with enormous sash windows, ornate plasterwork not to mention several large 19th Century maritime-themed oil paintings hanging high, that one cannot help but feel slightly in awe. Luckily the 4 metre wide, 3 metre high back projection screen I had installed across one corner of the room was big enough to hold its own within the space.

The exhibition opened to a queue of people thanks to Sarah Jacques of University Campus Suffolk who brought her Fine Art undergraduates along to have  a look and ‘show some energy’.  I gave an impromptu presentation which was fun 😉  Saturday was the busiest day thanks to a great feature by Wayne Savage which appeared in the East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star newspapers on the previous day.

This was the first time I had worked with back rather than overhead projection and it really does make things much easier in terms of positioning, providing that the necessary space behind the screen is available. In general, the show was a definite success with lots of minor production lessons learned and quite a few in-depth conversations with visitors, which was really informative.

I’ve been working with outlines and sparks now for some time and will probably now take a slightly different route foward. I hope to post samples of some of the ideas I’m working on for Luminescence over the coming weeks.

solo

Electricus, Jamie Gledhill 2014

Arts Council Funding

Development

I am happy to announce that the Arts Council of England  is supporting me in an artist development project over the first part of 2014 through a Grants for the Arts award. The project includes exhibitions at Ipswich Town Hall and Colchester Firstsite. This is a great opportunity for me to develop both  work and audience.

I will try to keep a mini-journal for the duration of the project which will live on these blog pages. Right now I am busy putting together my forthcoming show at Ipswich Town Hall, Electricus, which is also supported by the ReCreate project. I hope to add some samples of work in progress as the show develops…

electricus-logos

Spark Shower at Slack Space

Exhibition

As part of the ‘Lights in the Dark’ exhibition at Slack Space Colchester I exhibited ‘Spark Shower’, a development of an individual element of my 2013 masters project ‘Mirrornoise’. It was a positive experience not least being the first time I have exhibited an interactive work in Colchester where I am based. Slack Space is a very supportive organisation despite the meagre resources they have to hand and I commend them for giving artists such as myself an opportunity to show new work.

I tried something a little different from previous shows with the sound design cycling through a series of rhythmic sequences interspersed with periods of rest, all superimposed upon responsive sound elements such as spark noises. Each time a new rhythmic sequence began, a visual change occurred such as change of spark colour. Although pretty simple at heart, the transformative apect of this approach seemed to work.

Here is a excerpt of video shot of the screen during the private view.

5 Days in Liverpool – Day 5

Metal LAB

The final day! We each presented our musings to each other during the course of the afternoon. Some have responded to the local area by collecting photographic and audio evidence, others talked to local community groups and thought about re-appropriation of space. There have been artistic interventions using ‘objets trouvés’, a deeply personal communiqué inspired by the week and ongoing, unrelated work which has been progressed within the framework of the LAB. For those that responded to the local area, and I count myself one, a common theme was reclamation/re-appropriation of space and in particular re-designation of ‘liminal’ spaces, ie those in-between areas that have accrued meaning through usage and social signification.

I presented my explorations as described in the previous post and also another idea linked to reclamation of the ‘sheep pens’. I imagine how augmented reality might be used to create a game and/or an event. A free app would enable users to participate.

A game might feature ‘virtual sheep adoption’ and perhaps a time-limited competition with some sheep-related prizes – an inflatable version of the winning sheep? Tending and virtually feeding the sheep by visiting the sheep pens with the largest sheep winning might be a simple approach. Throw in a virtual bogeyman who occasionally steals sheep just to spice things up.

An event appeals to me in terms of blending virtual with real. Perhaps every evening for a week a huge virtual bogeyman appears precisely at sunset to devour a poor sheep resident in one of the pens. Crowds gather in anticipation. A sound system is used to add impact – placid sheep grazing noises are overwhelmed by a blood curdling yell as the bogeyman materializes. Although visual impact would be achieved via augmented reality objects rendered on handheld devices, audio would be heard by all and I wonder if this aural ubiquity coupled with a carefully nurtured sense of anticipation would lead to greater suspension of disbelief?

Although having fun, these ideas are borne out of the serious notion of re-invigorating a desolate area through the transformative power of art.

Many thanks to Metal Culture for inviting me to the LAB, adios Liverpool, see you soon I hope!

5 Days in Liverpool – Day 4

Metal LAB

Today was a real contrast from the previous three as we were mainly working on our own. It was good to get some time and space to think through all that I’d seen and heard but there was also a feeling of maybe being out on a limb.

I have been keen to try to build a parallel sequence of camera shots and Street View images in order that I might somehow interpolate between the two. Unfortunately the Street View sequence is essentially incomplete and the image quality not consistent due to the projection technique used to enable 3D control. The difference can be seen in the following ‘contact sheets’.

my-contacts

gsv-contacts

In my image set (the first one), even the name of the street has been blacked out, adding to a sense that the former (and until recent times) identity of ‘Martensen Street’ has been wiped out.

In the following video sketch I have run my image sequence through a home-spun slit-scan routine created using Quartz Composer. Video processing is real-time which lends itself well to becoming part of an interactive installation or performance.

I’ve long been interested in the axis between definition and abstraction/deconstruction and for me the slit-scan technique is a good way to explore this territory. The purposeful demolition of a street and all its culture leading to the creation of a useless empty space that kids cannot even play football on (because the ground is too soft) is a type of social deconstruction that I’m keen to respond to. Perhaps an audio-visual installation that gives the viewer control over the deconstruction process but implicitly involves them in this brutalist sweep-up, thus provoking reflection and argument? Just an idea, like…

5 Days in Liverpool – Day 3

Metal LAB

Day 3 at the LAB and things are cooking! We began the day by taking a look round the ‘Art Turning Left’ exhibition at the Tate Liverpool, which is a real amalgam of protest art, political dogma, social science and general anti-establishment culture across the last couple of hundred years. A shame that it is billed at £7 or so to get in, thus preventing wider enjoyment and in contrast (contradiction, even) to the stance and subject matter of most of the exhibition content! There also seemed to be a tail-off in more recent exhibits considering that the interest period is 1789-2013. No matter, it was still an inspirational and mindful experience.

We congregated as a group round a table in one of the Tate offices to discuss some thoughts, mainly about the role of artist, community and the sometimes troublesome nature of the relationship between the two. Conversation did briefly get quite animated and perhaps still thinking of the Tate exhibition, it did seem that we were on the verge of hammering out some kind of radical manifesto for a brief moment! However, it was not to be as we parted company to develop ideas and perhaps the seed of a response to all the information we had received over the preceding 2.5 days.

I for one returned to Edge Hill and started to look at the difference between some of the surrounding streets where clearances have recently taken place and their portrayal on Google Maps, which still shows many areas as they were before demolition.

In the following screen grab, the streets between Dorothy Drive and Marmaduke Street have all been cleared although you would not know by looking at this map.
overhead

In fact all that remains are what Ian Brownbill calls ‘sheep pens’ – thinly grassed expanses of earth too soft to walk across easily or play games on – ie not much use to anyone. Here’s an amalgam of what is shown of Martensen Street on Google Maps Street View and what’s actually there. Actuality vs representation.

amalgam

5 Days in Liverpool – Day 2

Metal LAB

This morning we took a bus tour around the local and wider areas with an illuminating commentary from Ian Brownbill. We were particularly interested in the success and failure of various attempts to regenerate the city and including the Edge Hill/Kensington area local to Metal Liverpool.

In the afternoon we had the pleasure of receiving a presentation from the one and only Lemn Sissay who shared some amazing words and ideas with us in a very performative way! Apart from his obvious and amazing talent, I was particularly impressed by his sheer enthusiasm for his own work and yet ability to stay open to questions and observations from the group.

We are all feeling quite saturated. Some have gone to another presentation this evening but I have chosen to stay in and reflect a little on the last two days, firstly by setting up this blog! More tomorrow…

pidgeons