At the moment I am planning an event simply titled Network with a collaboration I am a part of, Open Ear, which is directing much of the research I’ve done here into a form other than my writing and my own practice.

I will be creating a new performance work especially for this event (early days yet) but feel it’s important to make connections between artists diverse work dealing with networks in a performance context and to contextualise my own practice. It’s problematic on several levels as it’s essentially self-curating and as an academic (my double live) I’m sure I will will also be criticised as self-publishing, a crime punishable by death by RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) in England (well sometimes it feels like that) and that’s something I have to deal with.

As an artist however, and that’s what I am first and foremost an artist who employs research for his own practice and not a researcher who practices art, I don’t have a problem with this. For me organising this event is a continuation / progression of the research I pursue demonstrated in other forms and hopefully beneficial to anyone who might attend. This is something which is now being loosely termed as knowledge transfer within academia, essentially do research and disseminate it in a form that is not the classic publish route. Not only does it provide a healthier recognition of the many outcomes to research but it also helps to widen participation within higher education (oh how I love these academic buzz words). To me there seems like a natural progression from writing about artists work so that I am more aware of what’s happening, documenting the research and sharing it so that others can use it as a resource (including my students so if that’s not good practice as an academic what is?) to now actually curating an event where people can come and see the work which should smoothly create a tangible link between theory and practice.

Is self-curating as an artist a bad thing? It definitely can be, but at the same time it can also give a unique point of view into a particular topic / theme / practice that a curator will simply not have the depth of knowledge to do justice to. Most artists self-publish unashamably, if they didn’t we would never see their work. Since my work is going to only be a small part of this I feel the benefits cancel out any real negatives here but time will tell.

Anyway because I’m putting a lot of energy into this, posts over the next few weeks will hopefully tend to move in the direction of performance work to help me focus.

So why the fascination in the last few posts with light diodes, transmission / emission of information, connected devices, uni-directional networks? It all relates to some collaborative work I’ve been finishing recently which has been occupying my mind and so is a build up to (probably) the most involved (duration / work / collaboration etc.) work I have done to date.

The intention for this weblog has always been research for me on networks, hopefully towards and then to ultimately document a largely practice based Phd. Its function is as a thinking / testing / documenting ground for me, that is my priority, however I am glad that people seem to find it useful for their research / practice (or other reasons), this all fits with the topic of networks and allows me to network with other artists / researchers.

The weblog has been running for over a year now and has accumulated 157 posts to date on networks. I do sometimes have a wide definition of what defines a network (for a reason), but it looks as if I am nowhere close to slowing down in terms of finding content to write about. Now its about time to move on from this initial phase, what could be classified as field research, to start feeding the research into the work I am doing (which I have been doing all along really but I need to make that more visible here), directing the research a little more to the areas that particularly interest me (this is where the category usage page and its visible trends will become useful) and feeding back on both development and outcomes through the weblog.

So from here on in the weblog will start to do these and continue to do field research. This is not a change in form as such more of a development which will recurse back and forth between what I am thinking (as to date) and what I am making. So here goes…

Strictly speaking I have posted about one work of mine before here, RE:soundings which was performed as part of Open Ear’s Snd:arc- (Sound and Architecture), however that was an unexpected development - artistic opportunism. Video Networks and Video Networks #1: Dialogues is the first planned work which was heavily informed by Network Research.

Video Networks is a research project consisting of the development of an electronic interface system for enabling the creation of networked or connected video based art works and the works produced with this system. It’s purpose is to explore the potential of creating works which are cinematic in nature yet break away from fixed linear narratives to explore concepts such as montage, collage, mixing, rhythm, looping, non-linearity in combination with simple interactivity in real time.

The research was to investigate future directions for cinema and by doing so explore it as a non-linear artistic form. By pairing what are commonly associated as opposing concepts from traditional and new media’s, linear media with networked media, analogue hardware with digital software, structured narrative with database retrieval, audience theory with interaction models it becomes possible to develop ways and means that these (often opposing) forms can be integrated and used together successfully to demonstrate core principles of both and the progression of connected ideas and concepts.

Rather than create a single work which juxtaposed these issues for a set of particular reasons, e.g. fracturing a narrative, it was decided to create a working system, platform or framework, independent of the content it will show allowing the exhibition of a multitude of open ended cinematic works. This system employs custom software and hardware and by allowing digital to pass through analogue and back to digital the possibility of introducing noise (the potential for more variability) into the system arises. Employing devices with common principle technologies (e.g. light / infra-red emission and reception) in combination with light sensors essentially allows each part of the works created with the system to in effect see each other.

Dialogues (image above, video of the installation below) is a collaborative two channel video installation created by Frédérique Santune and myself as the first work / example as part of Video Networks. It explores ideas of place, mapping and translation. Each artist conceived of an exploratory video of the locality of the other. Two separate video works based on ideas of place, appropriation, exploration, walking, performance, rhythm and opposites (or binary); male and female, Irish and French, night and day etc., were to be created in isolation to be juxtaposed and controlled by each other in the installation.

For more information please see the website documenting all of the research and outcomes.

The event I was curating with Paul Adams Snd:arc- as part of the Open Ear collective is now documented online on our website. As part of the evenings performances I performed a work entitled RE:soundings (video below). Every sound produced during the performance was captured and manipulated live from radio signals. Both location and surrounding architecture dictated reception of signals, their quality and use. The version here is a recording of a view of the stage performance. See an alternative view of the performance here.

Live improvisation by Paul Adams, Andy Birtwistle, Garrett Lynch and Matt Wright (video below in two parts).

More videos of the nights performances and experimental films can be seen here.

Here are some excerpts from performances I was involved with on friday night (06/10/06) at the Orange Street Music Club in Canterbury, England. Although it could be said this is the first of many works which this research blog is intended to support, from my part this was an impromptu performance and in many ways reworking of ideas in Grimace, Looping Portrait #1 and C.a.r.n.e.t. . .d.a.b.o.r.d in a live context.

Visuals are created through the use of a small network of video cameras through a surveillance monitoring system. Feedback was mainly employed on the night from a monitor and the projection screen although this was occasionally cut in with shots of the audience and musicians.

Tuba by Matt Wright. Visuals by Garrett Lynch.

Audio by Matt Wright & Paul Adams. Visuals by Garrett Lynch.

Audio by Matt Wright & Paul Adams. Visuals by Garrett Lynch.

More videos are available on youtube under my profile. More work supported by this weblog research will be available soon.