I collect. I collect every day, with and without a camera or recording device. My practice finds its basis in the constant accumulation of audiovisual data, made without a specific “project“ in mind. It is this discipline that engages me with the social, the material and the imaginary. Finally, I collect.
As data amasses, it becomes possible to spot “links”, sometimes formal, most often psychic and intellectual. Once “links” surface, I begin combing through my archives to find data that enters into discourse with the “link”. The work uses images and sounds created at different periods, places and states of mind. I will return to the field (or the studio) to make new images and sounds that clarify/obfuscate an idea and fill voids that can exist between objects/ideas. It is very much working with the creative act in reverse. This strategy ensures that the work addresses concerns intrinsic to my imagination.
What interests me is the act of measuring. This typically human habit of quantifying and comparing is one of the most impressive successes of the imaginary. An inch, a kilometre, a litre. These are nothing but conventions; none of these things are actual objects but are representations. The measure of time is based on a metaphor that divides the Earth’s rotation into sections or a frequency of vibrating quartz. Architects of antiquity based measurements on their bodies. We have boulées (the distance between the tip of the index finger to the elbow of Étienne-Louis Boulée) and piraneses (from the tip of the fingers to the tip of Piranesi’s nose). These are persistent imaginary leaps that cross cultures and are accepted with very little questioning.
Measuring is an act of comparison.
With sound, my conceptual framework remains similar. I am interested in sounds that we do not normally pay attention to, either because they are “small” sounds or because they are white noise. Again the issue of the scale of the auditory impulse comes into play, using recording and editing the scale of a small sound can be distorted, the hum of white noise can be given colour.
I work using rigorous editing processes and creating specific viewing contexts. Visual and thematic verisimilitude makes it possible to present unexpected juxtapositions with intention and engagement. I use any available strategy to remind the viewer that an image or a sound is, after all, just a Thing, be it paper, plastic or electronic impulse.
