A Thing About Machines

This September (19th-21st) I will be co-curating an Other Art Festival in Coventry called A Thing About Machines.

There will be a load of special exhibitions, screenings and concerts in some really special venues around the city from artists who use technology invented in the last 100 years. Watches, bicycles, cars, Delia Derbyshire, the art and language movement, the cybernetic culture research unit. Coventry has been the birth place for all these remarkable innovations but has suffered a bit of empty nest syndrome since they went on to live elsewhere. It is time to pull all these influences back and create a new Thing for Coventry.

Call for Artists.

who: Early career Artists in any discipline

where: Coventry, West Midlands, UK

when: 19th – 21st September 2008

fee: There is a small budget for expenses

to apply: Please contact us by email for a full brief.

contact: cormac@sonicgraffiti.co.uk

deadline: 25th July 2008

Trampoline Festival Update

I had a great spot on the mezzanine of The Broadway Cinema where I could spy both on passers by on the street and at people in the bar. The screens were set up so that one was viewable from the inside and one from outside. It was a pretty cold night so it was mainly smokers and people on their way in to the cinema who watched the performance from the outside. But all in all it was a successful show.

Most of the live performances clashed with mine but I particularly enjoyed Heath Bunting’s Status Project and the maps on display were excellent. I also liked Join by Satellite Bureau although it was a little slow on the night but after hearing many talks on locative art it was good to see a project in reality. I only saw a few films but enjoyed ‘3 spots for expo 02′ by Susanne Hofer and Urs Hofer which used lovely low-fi and subtle visual effects.

There is a photo of my performance in the Photo Gallery here (choose Trampoline Year 10 from the menu) – not very informative but a nice shot.

Trampoline Festival, Nottingham

I will be performing at Trampoline in Nottingham this Thursday, 29th November. 9pm.
Broadway Media Centre, 14-18 Broad St, Nottingham NG1 3AL
This will be a special version of my Fontechnique projection performance called “Pursue, Protect, Prevent and Prepare”. The piece will examine some of the civil liberty issues of surveillance. I will be projecting text onto the window of the Broadway cinema that will be based on my observations of passers by and influenced by the official Home Office text on surveillance.
Fontechnique is a projection tool that only uses fonts (text and graphic) that can be manipulated in a number of ways. It was created as an antidote to the abundance of boring graphical VJ projections. It is dependent on direct input from the artist and has no reactive or automatic templates or features.The performance will last for an hour. If you are near by come along and be observed.
CORMAC IS WATCHING.

VAD Festival, Girona (updated)

Just back from the VAD digital Arts Festival in Girona where they showed my film “Butterflies”.

The highlights for me were as follows:
1. Girona itself. This was my first time in Spain and what an introduction. Winding medieval streets, a river full of carp, beautiful buildings, friendly people and excellent coffee.
2. Not strictly part of the festival but while I was there I popped in to see Jana Leo’s video installation “Intruder”. An excellent meditation on voyeurism. This was a nine monitor video installation which followed tow characters walking around an apartment and down a street. One of them was wearing a balaclava but the nice thing was that you couldn’t tell who the intruder was – was it the guy who woke up in the bed, the guy in the balaclava or was it me as the viewer. I was reminded of Christopher Nolan’s film “Following”.
3. The best performance at the festival for me was by Incite/ – a duo from Hamburg that nicely bridged the gap between the more predictable loop based electronica and more extreme noise. They even managed to address the old problem of laptop musicians being dull to watch by projecting synchronised greyscale patterns onto themselves while they played.
4. My favorite installation by far was by Gregory Shakar whose Analog Color Field Computer allowed you to play with the brightness and frequency of the colour on five computer monitors and also a tone that was syncronised with it using beautifully made control boxes.
5. There were some really great videos also, the best off the top of my head were: “Soma Songs” by Daniel Belton and Good Company, “Do-It-Yourself” by Eric Ledune, “My First Taste of Death” by Laurie Hill, “Lady Jiba” by Alaitz Arenzana and Maria Ibarretxe and “Nail Song” by Leonard Qylafi. (The screenings and concerts all took place in and around a beautiful old church and courtyard.)

The winners at VAD were: best live performance deservedly went to Incite/, best installation went to Gregory Shakar who I mentioned above, best video was awarded to Guillermo Trujillano for “Cartografia Bipolar de Cantautores en La Habana” which seemed to be a popular choice but I must admit I missed the point of it because I don’t speak Spanish so it would be unfair for me to comment on it. The award for artwork under this years theme of H20 was given to Jacobo Sucari for his documentary “Relatos de la Periferia” – there were a number of admirable and interesting documentaries but I thought that it was a little strange for them to be included in what was supposed to be a digital arts festival. The final prize went to Laurie Hill for “My First Taste of Death” in which he animated a story he wrote when he was twelve – which is a great concept and was done with great style.

Butterflies

Butterflies

Butterflies is a new video installation by Cormac Faulkner. It was created through a series of workshops with adults with learning difficulties in Coventry, who were creating artworks inspired by butterflies. The film is a series of studies of some of the participants as they work and is inspired by the artworks that they created.

Exhibition Dates and locations:

17th – 21st October 2007, VAD Festival Internacional de Vídeo i Arts Digitals, Girona, Spain. www.vadfestival.net

Pantheon Xperimental 6.0 Film & Animation Festival, Cyprus, 22-24 November 2007. www.pantheonxperimental.org

I am an Instrument

I am an Instrument, Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry

Dates: From Now – on-going
Location: The Main Staircase

Sir Alfred Herbert’s vision for his art gallery was that it would promote his vision for the City of Coventry, that it’s inhabitants could see beyond their industrial roots to “wider views, far horizons and deeper thinking”. Inspired by Sir Alfred original vision and the architectural plans for the original Gallery I have created a new installation on the staircase that allows visitors to play with and explore the full height of the building. The music for the piece is designed to generate a feeling of progression: progression up the staircase, progression from having no art gallery to Coventry having it’s first and a progression in art that now incorporates new technologies, tools and spaces. The music contains sounds recorded around the Gallery and elements of Lady Herbert’s speech at the opening of the Gallery in 1960.

You are invited to explore the effect of your movements on the music simply by using the staircase.

This is the second of three pieces to use the staircase, the first being “lully, lulla” which allowed visitors to control a choir singing The Coventry Carol.

Introductions

Hello and welcome to my blog where I will give details of my current projects and exhibition dates and times.