Hello. Please find below some examples of my work as part of my application for SARF.
Currents
An installation and performance project built around hundreds of discarded computer fans.
The installation was in an original Victorian police box on Easter Road in Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Art Festival, August 2014. The police box was filled with 172 computer fans of varying sizes. A computer hidden in the box accessed weather data from around the world, and the fans recreated the wind patterns of six of these locations. The visitor was therefore briefly transported to these places by feeling what the wind conditions were at that very moment.
The Secret Sounds of Spores
Hidden under every mushroom, invisible to the naked eye, thousands of spores fall and are blown away by the tiniest current of wind. Shining a laser underneath a protected mushroom makes these spores visible. It looks gorgeous.
I worked with mycologist Patrick Hickey to create a musical installation out of these spores. Using custom built software and hardware, we made a system that reacted in real time to make sounds to represent the natural processes inherent in the mushroom. I built a number of electro-mechanical instruments that transformed the falling spores into music, surrounding the viewer with sound and movement, all controlled directly by a live mushroom.
The installation has been shown at Inspace in Edinburgh, The Arches in Glasgow, and Mediamatic in Amsterdam.
The Sound of Whisky
A video and piece of music made out of the sounds of the whisky distilling process. All of the sound in the video was recorded on the island of Jura in western Scotland.
Living in the Recent Past
A short audio piece about echo, reverb, sound, and place.
The Weather Gage
The Weather Gage was a sound installation for Bangor Sound City.
I hand built a series of solenoid-triggered glockenspiel notes mounted onto cherry wood from the Hicksville Planing Mill in western Maryland. These hung from an alcove on the Garth Pier in Bangor, North Wales. Small propellors mounted outside the alcove were designed to spin in the wind, and control the rate of playback.