Sound Drawing and connections to Abstract Drawing

Listening again to my Sound Drawing 2013. I was showing it with my abstract drawings over the two day Oaks Park Open Studios this summer. It sounds a lot better in a big space.

Sound Drawing and closed sketchbook from Snowdonia Long Drawing

A sample can be found here:

https://soundcloud.com/sound-out-loud/up-20high-20walk-20-20track#t=0:21

The two days were packed with discussions. A little lad listening with his dad explained ( after his dad enquired about my sound drawing) ' The sounds are like charcoal and the drawings and the logs are burnt on the fire to make the charcoal', it's wonderful the way children can grasp easily just what they see.
I love this photo taken by Helen Goodwin of the MA show set up, as Alison Carlier and me dance to a section of sound drawing with the rhythm of fast walking downhill.

As a lady walks into the room she notices the trees outside and my quick tree sketches, as we discuss the Sound Drawing she recalls the memory of being unwell one day on holiday and remaining in her room became fascinated by the ever changing qualities of tree outside the window. On her return home, the photograph she took as a reminder was extremely disappointing, it captured nothing of her fascination. Every individuals memory of a place contains much more than the click of a static camera.

Walk On, passing through an exhibition

Exhibition - Walk On: 40 years of Art Walking, Pitzhanger Manor House

The Walk Book and CD, Janet Cardiff, 2005. Walks in Paris, London, and New York.

I am sitting on a park bench in Ealing and switch on Janet Cardiff’s narrative. Instantly I am connected to her reality, she is sitting on a park bench, in the very different urban environment of Central Park, New York. She describes children on bikes passing by and exactly at the same moment children cycle past me, here in London. I listen to more descriptions but wander off in my mind as a cat has just approached and a group of people gather round to stroke it. A choir is practising: she explains’ I am very bad at linear working; I use an open ended narrative, skipping from one thing to another’. I listen to more fragments as she passes through the streets of New York and begins to distinguish memory from perception. ‘In pure memory the temporal sequence of events is shattered’. I agree with that but start to lose interest. No longer able to connect to her continuing observations, I realise that listening to this narrative is displacing me from being here, now. Police sirens pass in the distance, was it here, or there in Central Park? 

Janet Cardiff would like to ‘move a whole room like a time machine from London to New York’. I think she just moved a park.

Simon Pope, A Common Third

We meet walking artist Simon Pope, we cross the park and chat without really noticing what's around. He escorted us out of the park as his contribution in 'Walk On'. We re-enter and admire the blossom and trees on the way back. We sit at the kiosk, eat ice cream and people watch.

Walking and Drawing, connections through landscape

 

A brief synopsis of essay and drawing

I wander, progress, uncover, connect and navigate – walking, noticing, thinking.

This path has evolved in time with a purpose and with the rhythm and movement of walking.

I focus here and there and stop, drawn by the physicality of structure or space. I remain standing to sustain the physical energy; the mental attitude; the immediate response, making marks that relate to a visual directness, rejecting the single perspective viewpoint as seen when looking through a window, or at a photographic still frame as if in Claude’s glass.

I walk, I draw from observation to find things out, searching for little differences that can communicate and reveal a link to the world.

How is the landscape seen; what elements might remain in our memory, connecting again a viewer and the landscape?

I look for this residue of differences that might shift perception and open a new response for the individual viewer.

 

 

 

View sketchbook here http://flic.kr/p/dxZ6pn

 

Walking and drawing from Mortehoe to Morte point, drop down to Rockham Bay, find strange wavelike rock formations, walk up to the sharp blades of Bull point and Baggy point. The next drawing starts where rock layers of two continents collide, buckle and fold, I draw, sitting next to an ancient iron chain. Carry on to follow the coastal path up to Spekes Mill waterfall, past a contrast of old burnt wood, fresh green and bright orange. I stand concentrating on the rhythm of the patterns as the water rushes down. I notice a strange effect caused by the afterimage, motionless surrounding cliffs appear to shake and vibrate in sync with these rhythms.