A Hole in the Ground by the Sea

Work as part of the APT Show +One.

My work is an 8 channel surround sound recording and performance titled 'A hole in the Ground by the Sea'. Housed in a 16" floor tom it is work that is heavily influenced by my 'plus one'David Toop and will be shown alongside images of 'Wasp Flute' This is what I wrote about the work.

'Wasp Flute' was an instrument that was built but never meant to be played, a study on possibilities. I discovered it whilst researching ideas around earth music and the practice of using dug pits or holes in the ground as sound boxes for indigenous instruments.

Both David and myself share a fascination with the activation of objects & spaces, sound becomes transformed on an elemental level, shamanistic excursions into non ordinary realms of reality, utilising sound to interact with the energy field of non-living objects. These transformative processes are often inaudible, through the technology of high gain pre amplification and tiny sensitive microphone capsules these interactions can be revealed.

In Ian Banks' novel 'The Wasp Factory', Frank Cauldhame, an understandably psychotic teenager, observes many shamanistic rituals which includes a mechanism built from a discarded clock face that he believes can determine future events depending on how a wasp 'chooses' its demise.

'Wasp flute' is the opposite of that, at its heart is nurture and enablement, an attentive study in quiet sound and small vibration. They both hold the same reverence for the creature at its heart, however only one concerns itself with what will happen, the other remains content in what is happening now.

I'm interested in how we respond to audible signals, not only the binary on/off of lighthouse or drum but also the revealed chaos within the natural world, a hole in the ground by the sea.