for a 6x5 grid of 30 flat-panel loudspeakers under canvas | June 2004, c.22' looped
NOTES | SOUND&IMAGE | EXTRACTS | PHOTOS
This installation presents a series of studies which explore the notion of image. This is a term normally associated with the visual, referring to a picture or likeness of somebody or something, produced either physically (sculpture, painting, photograph) or in the mind. In audio, image tends to be used to describe the distribution of sound presented over two or more loudspeakers <ETH> again a representation or fabrication, but of a space.
Studies on Canvas aims to reflect and explore both senses of
the word. We are presented with a blank canvas, which remains blank throughout
the installation. Such images as may be perceived are rendered entirely in
sound; any visual content of the canvas must be imagined. Unlike a painting,
these images are animate, permitted to move around the canvas and occupy increasing
and decreasing amounts of it; they are also transitory, not fixed permanently
to the material upon which they are displayed. Like a painting, however, the
images remain captured events, frozen at least in a space, if not time; the
canvas continues to frame activity, and its contents must therefore be viewed
from a distance, dispassionately perhaps, by the observer.
The installation comprises 30 flat-panel speakers in a 6x5 arrangement behind
the blank canvas, an arrangement which permits very precise and stable spatial
imaging.
Studies:
• bagatelle
• bubbles
• during foot and mouth in Devon
• ice on the canal
• cavern
• driftwood
• two Devon beaches
• marbles rolling down a slanted table
• hardware
Studies on Canvas was commissioned by Sonic Arts Network for the Sound Circus conference, June 11-13 2004.
