Simon Fildes and Katrina McPherson, Part 1

1 Mar 2006 in Highland, Visual Arts & Crafts

New Media, New Vision

KENNY MATHIESON talks to Nairnshire-based new media artists SIMON FILDES and KATRINA McPHERSON.

SIMON FILDES is one of the artists short-listed for a Creative Scotland Award (the recipients are to be announced later this month), while Katrina McPherson is about to see the publication of her work book on video dance, the culmination of her own Creative Scotland Award in 2002.

The couple live in Ferness with their two young children, Eilidh and Isabella, having moved there from their previous home in Newtonmore. The are collaborators on video dance and other projects, including the Move-Me booth, which premiered this month at the ICA in London, and is scheduled to visit Scotland later in the year.

Much of their work is web-based, and readers are encouraged to visit their various websites cited at the end of this interview.

NORTHINGS: Simon, perhaps we should begin by saying something about your Creative Scotland application, which involves exploring connections between dance and the rock climbing activity known as bouldering?

SIMON FILDES: The project is called ‘Crux’. I’ve been climbing since I was about five – my parents took me out to the Highlands. It’s never been a full time serious occupation, but it is something I’ve always done. I began to see the similarities between climbing and dance in terms of the physical necessities and demands, and also noted that some of the best climbers I was watching on the walls had a very dance-like approach to movement, with its own grace and beauty.

N: Did this develop over a period of time?

SF: Yes. We have been tinkering with those ideas for several years, and when the Creative Scotland Awards came round again, I thought it was time to formulate a project around it. The idea is to make a series of short videos based on bouldering, which is very pure form of rock climbing, done at low level with no ropes and intrusive equipment, so it lends itself very well to filming, as well as to the inherent movement involved.

Our working relationhsip works as well as it does because we are both going in the same direction with the work, and fundamentally we both agree about what we are trying to do.

N: How does it relate to dance practice?

SF: I wanted to look at how we might take Laban notation from dance and apply it on the rock face, and how you could see the different types of geology in an area forcing a different type of “choreography” on a climber. We wanted to map that movement using dance notation form, and in a sense hold a mirror back to the climbers in aesthetic terms as well.

N: So you would have both video and written notation of the moves?

SF: We wanted to make a series of short videos, but also to take the notation from the climbing back to dancers and see how they interpret that in turn.

N: The Creative Scotland Awards are very competitive – can this project have a life if you are not successful in securing one?

SF: I think so, yes, but in a different way, a more fluid way. There are a couple of television possibilities, but that would be more of a documentary approach, I suspect. We are definitely very keen to do something with it, whatever happens with the Creative Scotland Award – and it has been great recognition for me just to make it to the shortlist. I’m delighted with that, whatever happens. I’m in some illustrious company on that list!

N: The Move-Me Booth has been your major project of the last couple of years – what exactly is that?

SF: It is a photo booth for dance, basically. We had been working with Ricochet Dance for a number of years on various projects, and we had been talking with them about developing our film ‘The Truth’ as a touring installation project, and discussed various ideas around the possibilities of that.

KATRINA McPHERSON: We were thinking of a kind of hyperchoreography-type of interactive thing, but then we started to think wouldn’t it be more interesting to get people to dance rather than use a computer?

SF: We wanted to give people a stronger engagement with the choreographer, and to give them the chance to work with some very well known names in contemporary dance circles.

KMcP: The photo booth was definitely our model. People use them in various ways – some people like to play around, and some take it very seriously. It’s basically a leveller, and the Move-Me booth gives you the same opportunity only with dance, whether you are a professional dancer or just someone off the street.

SF: We also felt it was a bit of an antidote to the current trend in dance video for very high production values lifted from pop promos and the like, but not necessarily with very interesting content. The core of this project was the relationship between the choreographer’s instructions and what you choose to do as your interpretation of the dance.

N: How many choices are there?

SF: We have contributions from eight internationally known choreographers, each about 1-2 minutes long, or you can devise your own dance. It seems to have really captured people’s imaginations.

KMcP: We have been surprised by how excited people have been about it. We did some trials with it at dance schools in Dundee and at Roehampton in London before its official premiere at the ICA. We wanted to test it out, and also to generate some content for the website before it opened at the ICA. It’s the most complex thing we have done, I would say.

SF: There was a physical build to take into account, there was bespoke software, some quite complicated audio-visual aspects to it, and the website, so there is a lot going on in this one. We have been able to bring a lot of sponsors and a lot of funding on board, and having Ricochet as collaborators has been vital. They were every open to it.

KMcP: They also had the links already established with the choreographers. It would have taken us a long time – and probably a lot of refusals! – if we had been trying to do that from scratch.

N: When will we see it in Scotland?

SF: It’s coming to Scotland from June. It’ll be at the Universal Hall in Findhorn between 14-27 June, and it will be back in 2007 in Inverness. It’s going to the Nevis Centre in Fort William as well, so we have a good Highland presence for it.

N: So it’s really a touring artefact?

SF: It is that, yes, but what is fundamentally fascinating for us is the website. Looking at the videos people are making is really interesting. There is a notable variety of interpretations already, and we only have 90 or so on there, so it will be really interesting when we get up to 1000 and see the range of things that people are doing with it.

N: I imagine that could be interesting for the choreographers as well?

KMcP: I think it will, and I suspect half of them will want to redo their instructions now that the implications are becoming clearer! Some of the users have really played with the idea of using the space by moving in and away from the camera and so on, while others haven’t quite got their head around that aspect, but it has been very varied. We have the potential to evolve it as well, bringing in new choreographers and so on.

SF: It should be said that the first funding for this project came from the HI~Arts Visual Arts Fund. They gave us £400 to develop the concept and build a prototype, and we took that to the Arts Council of England for our first major pitch, and the £400 got us our first £20,000. I think we are up to about £87,000 in terms of cash now.

N: Do you have specific funding for the Scottish tour?

SF: The Scottish Arts Council are subsidising the tour. It ticks all the boxes in terms of access and participation, and having international choreographers involved has also been a big attraction for them. You can treat it as a laugh with your mates or you can make a serious attempt. It was only designed for one person, but the most we have seen so far is six, although there wasn’t much movement going on!

N: Katrina, I understand your Creative Scotland project to create a work book for video dance – which you wrote about in Northings back in 2003 – is about to come to its final conclusion?

KMcP: It is, at last! The project was to create a work book for dancers and choreographers who wanted to move into working for the screen, and I’ve just sent off the proofs, and it will be published by Routledge on 11 April. I had written the bulk of the book before I sent it to them, because I felt they would need to see it. There has been a good advance reaction, and people are already talking of using it as a textbook on their courses and so on, and I was able to show Routledge there was a market there for it.

N: For those new to the idea, what is video dance?

KMcP: I suppose you can equate it with short narrative fiction films that don’t exist as plays. There has been a long-standing relationship between film and dance anyway, but as an art form in itself video dance has only really emerged in the last couple of decades, and especially the last decade, as a viable art form.

N: With more outlets for the work now available?

KMcP: There is now a network of specific video dance festivals around the world, and more and more schemes coming in. Dance travels pretty well because there is no language barrier. In this country Channel 4 and the BBC have both been important in that development. The result has been that there is a significant body of work now, and individual makers have had the chance to make more than one piece.

N: How did you get involved in it?

KMcP: I am probably one of the first generation who came from a dance background and decided I wanted to make work for the screen. I went to Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee in 1990 and studied Electronic Imaging there. It meant I was coming from a dance background and also meeting a lot of people from visual arts there as well, and I’ve tried to pull all of that together. My work has been a mixture of video dance works, projection work in live contexts, and directing dance programmes for television, which has been a way of subsidising the video dance work.

The work of Simon and Katrina can be explored more fully at the following websites: