Starting this month with an inspiring and timely quote from the always-brilliant Donna Haraway, on the importance of ‘making oddkin’:
“Staying with the trouble requires making oddkin; that is, we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles. We become-with each other or not at all. That kind of material semiotics is always situated, someplace and not noplace, entangled and worldly. Alone, in our separate kinds of expertise and experience, we know both too much and too little, and so we succumb to despair or to hope, and neither is a sensible attitude.”
Donna Haraway: ‘Staying With The Trouble: Making Kin In The Chthulucene’
My ongoing research into the concept of ‘Umwelt’- the diverse and strange sensory bubbles that exists around each living thing- has led me to start thinking in wider terms about the ways we might interact with art works and ideas, especially when considering differing sensory accessibility needs.
So, over the past few weeks, following on from making maquettes of some imaginary organs, I rebuilt a larger one to begin looking at ways to interact with these objects using sound and movement. What if a sculpture made a sound when you moved towards it? What if light or heat affected its shape..?
The term ‘organ’, etymologically-speaking is derived from the word ‘musical instrument’, (and don’t forget the actual instrument called an organ of course) so it’s not a far leap from this… to making organs into instruments!
Organ #1 is an imaginary organ with a mini-theremin inside, that can be played by touching or moving around near it.
Organ #2 is a digitally interactive shape made in TouchDesigner that distorts and reacts to sound. In the video above, I’ve added additional footage of other made-up organs, synthesiser sounds over a rhythm made with an adapted recording of my heartbeat.
Below is a video of the two organs being played simultaneously, (in a fairly unglamorous performance by me in jogging bottoms- sorry).
The synth is connected to a Playtronica TouchMe device- something I’ve had my eye (and ears) on for a while, and I’ve been having enormous fun generating music with it. For those who like experimental, relaxing sounds, here’s a recording you can listen to:
The idea of the human body with its many organs and parts working together as a ‘finely-tuned’ instrument, isn’t a new one, and as someone with multiple disabilities, I can’t help but wonder what kind of strange concerto my own body might conjure up, were it able to.
My aim for the next month is to work further on these organs, and to maybe look at how I might invite other artists to work with them to create interesting sounds together.
That’s all for this month, now for some friends’ updates:
News from the biome
Cool things that friends, collaborators and people from my networks are doing:
My friend and regular collaborator Frankie is crowdfunding to go to art school. It’s going well, but if you want to support Frankie’s brilliant work, there’s still time.
On Sat 11 Nov, Frankie will be modelling at SCAC for a one-off Gustav Klimt themed drawing evening, led by another creative friend, Sooxanne. It’ll be magic!
Total Refusal are doing a seminar at Sussex Uni’s Digital Humanities Lab (a hybrid event) on Mon 23 Oct. They are “a collective of artists, researchers, and filmmakers who upcycle the resources of mainstream video games to create political narratives in the form of videos, interventions, performances, and lectures.”
Dreamy Place is the new name for Brighton Digital Festival, and it kicks off in Crawley on 12 Oct and Brighton on 19 Oct, with loads of cool stuff planned.
If you’re an avant-garde Halloween-ster, I’ll be joining with my Church of Italo collective on Fri 27 Oct and Project Ours, a Feminist film collective, for a screening of Suspiria (1977) at Fabrica. Come for the film, stay for our after party!