MICRO RESIDENCIES
Previous Residency  |  Andrew Kelly ‘Altered Space – Explorations In Sound’

You are invited to join ESW for a one-off viewing of the outcome of Andrew’s work, taking the form of projections and audio.
Saturday 8th March, 6-8pm, ESW Project Space – refreshments will be served
In February, Andrew Kelly started his Micro Residency exploring sound as symbol and object.

Andrew’s work takes inspiration from themes commonly used in experimental and minimalist music such as repetition and stasis. Using diagrams that are involved in the visual mapping of musical principles, his starting point is visual but extends ultimately to combining both audible and visual aspects in order to create interactive installations.



An Ocean of Sound

To me sound has become an increasingly seductive medium. In the past year or two I have been interested in the idea of experimenting with immersive, atmospheric sound, created through sometimes very instant and intuitive techniques.

Although past works have used hidden equipment, my work is just as much about the visual as the audible.

Sound you would generally think of as a transparent medium, but it has physical manifestations. Recording technology has turned sound into object. Music cartography represents complex structures that can transfer directly to sculpture. On the one hand you have the transparent medium of sound, the world of the immaterial, on the other you have the solid, tangible world of the object, working in a way that transposes the two is becoming of interest.

The ancient Greek tetrachord, represented in music theory in the form of the triangle, formed the basis of the western musical scale we know and use today. From there theorists have elaborated diagrams of varying complexity and beauty to map different tuning combinations. Partially removed but still inextricably linked to the sound world, these diagrams are shamanistic in quality, a link to the sound world and to the ethereal. Just as the process of recording music separates it from time and place and into object these diagrams are transient, partially removed from the world of the ethereal but still inextricably linked.

Music technology has made possible the continuous expansion of pitch, duration, timbre and loudness to the point where music/sound can become self-perpetuating. Synthesizers and circuits allow the musician to sustain notes for as long as there is electricity. These ideas are universal, and are in both old and new low-fi and hi-tech. The Aeolian harp was a stringed instrument not to be played by hand. Its duration and dynamic was entirely determined by which way the wind blew.

Modern technology has increased flexibility and the range of approaches, allowing infinite possibilities, adapting new material and technologies to old traditions and practices - whether powered by wind, mechanically or electronically. Radiowaves, resonances and feedback, are carried through an ocean of constantly changing sound, shifting, transposing past and present, solid and the transparent, organic and the geometric. Sensors triggering different parts of a composition, pitches, harmonies allow for sonic accidents and the element of chance.

Turning over the final realisation of the piece to external factors is important in my work. To be in total control means you can lose a lot of magical possibilities. Ultimately I am interested in combining visual, kinetic and audible elements to create transformative experiences.