The first single from my collaboration with Andrew Wasylyk is out now on the excellent London-based label Clay Pipe Music.
Physical Loops of Colour and Light
When I listen to the music I’ve made with Andrew, I imagine colours and shapes dancing in time and space. I’ve attempted to translate the images in my head so others can see them too.
I’ve been trying to make visuals to accompany music for a lot of my life. I keep experimenting with different techniques. For each new project I like to try something I’ve not done before.
This time, I knew I wanted to create movement without using stop-frame or digital animation. So I’ve created the visuals to accompany Communal Imagination using hand-painted discs which I’ve spun on my record player and filmed through camera lenses, kaleidoscopes and prisms.
In 2006 when I was on an artist residency in Eindhoven I saw a replica of Bauhaus artist Lazlo Moholy Nagy’s kinetic sculpture ‘Light Prop for an Electric Stage’ at the Van Abbemuesum. Nagy’s sculpture is made of shiny metal – perforated discs, vertical poles and mechanical moving parts. As it rotates lights are shone on it casting mesmerising patterns of light and shadow. It’s had an enduring impact on me and regularly comes to mind when I’m making visuals for music.
Although I studied painting at art school, I’ve done very little since I graduated in 2002. But for some reason I had an urge to pick up a paintbrush again. I had a yearning for a slow process. Maybe it’s an antidote to spending lots of time at a computer screen? Or something of a reaction to the recent glut of AI generated imagery? Each disc takes me at least two full days to paint, plus time to come up with a composition and to film and edit at the end.
This slow process seems to suit the character of the music which developed gradually. The length of the process gives me time to listen while I work and, importantly, time to let my mind wander.