"My current work focuses on the relationship between the material and the virtual and how connections can be virtually and materially constructed. This intends to question notions of research as practice. This is taking the form of a digital visual/textual archive that has an infinite open end point. The 'links' within the archive are generated through creating connections between text and objects both materially and through the use of search engines. Whilst exploring the interconnectedness of the everyday I also generate 'satellite' pieces of work that stem from particular archive entries.
The work intends to investigate the presentation and consumption of digital based work and also includes the use of fictitious entries in the archive in an attempt to question the authenticity attached to traditional notions of archiving. Influences from non-linear experimental literature are utilised in the creation of narratives that exist as satellite pieces of work stemming from the archive. These narratives are structured around found lists of information. My practice currently involves film, sound, digital 3D modelling, drawing, photography, found objects, multiples, performance, installation and text/narratives."
The Cloud Collector is a short story located around an elderly man who, since the 1950's, has developed an obsession with taking photographs of the cloud like tracks left in the sky by aeroplanes. He stores the images numerically (using the numbers that come free with blank VHS tapes) in hundreds of books within his house.
The abstract elements within the story stem from the fact that the structure
of the narrative is written to include the titles of the top ten best
selling novels from the year 1950:
1. The Cardinal
2. Joy Street
3. Across the River and into the Trees
4. The Wall
5. Star Money
6. The Parasites
7. Floodtide
8. Jubilee Trail
9. The Adventurer
10.The Disenchanted
This piece also exists as a video with a voiceover and a seemingly endless series of the 'cloud' images. It is part of a series of work entitled 'Bestsellers' (each a narrated video) that takes its influence from the underlying method of applying rules within the experimental literature of the French Oulipo Group writers.
Delivering the news to those who still required it in paper form, he rode his rusted BMX along Joy Street each morning. His route took him across the river and into the trees where the drone of the tarmac subsided into an uneasy silence, and then he would often see the colourless figure of the cardinal in the misty leaded window and feel slightly uncomfortable about his silhouette.
Since the 1950's the cardinal had been a collector. From his window, the wall opposite was etched with years of abuse and when he stared across, he would see fantastical arrangements within this urban monolith. His gaze was only broken intermittently by an expectant glance to the sky. Today he considered how the imprints on the horizon were reminiscent of the pattern on the pedestal his father had left him all those years ago, which now served as a plinth for his camera.
The flood tide from three years ago had damaged his best work, but the tattered ones were still included alongside the pristine books. The parasites that shared the books' wooden shelves crawled invisibly through the important images they contained. Each one was religiously classified with sticky video numbers, like star money, that came, unintentionally, to enumerate the later years of his life.
Occasionally when he looked up to the traces in the sky they reminded him of a time when as a boy he had taken part in the jubilee trail and gained a trophy for his success as an adventurer. Thinking of these lost years often made him a disenchanted man.
December, 2007This first edition of the Atlantic Basin Project has been made possible by the efforts of members of the Independent Artists Cooperative and its in house collective Rock Can Roll Independent and through the generous support of the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council.