Statement Of Research Interest
My work has most often utilized the medium of sound as a way to explore issues of perception, phenomenology, experience, and narrative. It was, in fact, these same issues that brought me to sound from a tradition of object making (indeed, I possess significant experience and a skill set to match in the realm of material fabrication) because it became clear that in order to engage perception, phenomenology, experience, and narrative adequately and efficaciously time, sequence, and change would become necessary components of my work. So I drew on my experience in media production and brought the skill sets developed there into my studio practice.
From then until now, sound work has been the foundation of my studio practice. My engagement with sound may perhaps be divided into two basic categories or aspects which exist in symbiosis with one another. The first aspect is the composed work, that bears a kinship with film or literature in my conception of it. Generally speaking, work in this channel is made up of field recordings, samples, processed sounds, and constructed sounds arranged into compositions of varying duration ostensibly to collaborate with the imagination of the audience in the creation of a work of art existing within the mind’s eye. I am committed to continuing this practice, building greater technical skill with it, and continuing to take it further. The second aspect of my work with sound is the performative. The preponderance of the work belonging to this category is concerned with perception, experience, and space. Using building blocks similar to those found in my composed work, I create live responsive compositions that are particular to the audience, space, and venue in which they exist. This work is context specific and ranges the gamut from pieces designed to exist at the liminal edges of perception to work that is conspicuous and in the foreground. Here also, I’m seeking to improve my technical skill and ability, but additionally I’m interested in looking for new contexts into which I can insert this work.
I am not content to stay still and stagnate; over the course of the last few years, my studio practice has begun to bleed out into forms beyond the medium of sound. In the studio I’ve been considering ideas of social practice and experimenting with writing as a means of making. While I have yet to land on a satisfactory way of incorporating these things into my artistic repertoire, I feel certain there is something worth while in these forms, so I continue to pursue them while simultaneously maintaining my engagement with sound as a material.
I am most keen to expand my oeuvre to include writing. I find it compelling as a medium in ways analogous to sound: namely, in its textural, narrative, and textual qualities. Like sound, I believe that it also is a time-based media, but unlike sound its timeline is not strictly fixed. There is a certain flexibility that exists in the duration of text that cannot readily be achieved in other time-based media. This, combined with the direct nature of the relationship that exists between text/words and the mind, introduces an interesting situation in which new possibilities may arise. I want to capitalize on the (as I observe it) lower mediation threshold inherent to well/appropriately crafted text.
Lowering the mediation threshold, or reducing the perceived distance between my ideas and my audience is a regular concern in my creative process, and this concern is one of the motives in my desire to hybridize the forms my creative production takes. More specifically I’m interested in the possibilities that my arise from the combination of two or more of the following media: social practice (game/s, hospitality, conversation), writing (fiction, correspondence, context-free/speculative, process), audio (composed, performative, broad/podcast, spacial, narrative), video (phenomenological, narrative, evocative), and space (installation, cartography, experiential re-contextualization). By combining media or aspects of various media, I hope to blend new, unique, original (if not original, at least novel) experiences for audiences to encounter my ideas.
I want art that connects ideas to people’s lives and experiences, art that meets people in their daily lives and interacts with them where they are. I am not opposed to art institutions, nor am I a populist per se, but I am interested in pushing against boundaries and challenging assumptions. This informs my desire to reach non-traditional audiences and bring non-traditional forms into institutional contexts. In this vein another of my big-picture goals is to pursue collaborations or develop relationships that may help facilitate the presentation of work both in traditional and especially non-traditional contexts. The presentation of work is inextricably linked to it’s context, or perhaps better stated, the presentation of work contextualizes the ideas it presents. Therefore, the idea should inform the venue chosen, or at the very least the venue should influence the presentation of the idea in order to achieve maximum impact: because of this, I want to gain a better understanding of how to utilize venue and presentations as a sort of meta-media.
I am eager to craft new or novel experiences for my audience. I see all aspects of the artistic endeavor as variables to be altered in pursuit of a satisfying outcome. Few things in life are as exciting as stepping up to such a task as this. In short, my research agenda might be imperfectly summarized as follows: I am dedicated to finding meaningful ways to intersect the everyday with my own creative content.