Eastgate Centre, Inverness, 29 July 2007

No 1 In A Series Of Fortunate Events

IT IS miraculous that HEAT (Highland Experimental Arts & Technology) were able to stage the first in a series of multimedia events only nine days after their first meeting. John McGeoch, the Director of Arts in Motion, recently formed the group to explore relationships between art and technology and provide opportunities for artists of all kinds to connect, collaborate and showcase their work in relation to new media.

HEAT will no doubt provide a valuable forum for creative collaboration and discussion, supporting the development of new media works through workshops, visiting speakers and a programme of annual events. It is an initiative full of exciting and unexpected possibilities and it will be extremely interesting to see the work of artists within the group develop over time.

Cross-fertilisation between art forms and the opportunity for experimentation outside an artist’s chosen medium through music, film, painting, sculpture or digital media is fertile ground. This type of event is more about experimentation than pre determined outcomes and it was refreshing to go to a performance and have absolutely no idea what was coming next.

A fluid relationship between different art forms was represented in this inaugural event which combined elements of circus and cabaret with film, live painting, dance and poetry. Utilising the central space of Eastgate’s ground floor with an overhead atrium provided the opportunity for several stage and performance spaces including acrobatic work from Cat Harrison and Jennifer Patterson.

John Hall’s Albert’s Quartet provided music composed for the event as the audience entered, with percussion, cello, violin and keyboard setting the scene for something exotic, mysterious and as darkly theatrical as the table settings.

The first screening of the evening on the main stage was a 10 minute film by Flick and James Hawkins, “Water, Wind and Light”, merging reflections of water and sky into a series of abstracts akin to the artist’s signature paint handling.

Images of tension created by air on water together with natural light and colour were accompanied by “Kolysanka”, a track from Canadian group Ragni who performed live later in the evening. A natural extension of Hawkin’s approach to film as a digital sketchbook, the images focused on colour, surface and natural elements.

Multi media artist Caroline Bury’s “Mandala 12” of plaster cast torsos and projection installed beside the second stage gave an exciting preview of a large scale work in collaboration with Arts in Motion to be installed at this year’s Belladrum Festival.

A 30-foot screen called “The Goddess Tree” will incorporate the body casts of 18 women of all ages and provide the backdrop for projected images accompanied by music. Currently exploring fibre glass construction in her practice after graduating from the Moray College Fine Art Degree course earlier this year, the artist revealed another talent during the first half of the evening with a belly dancing performance to live music.

Poet Sgod gave a monologue about the curse of technology on his “electronic croft” and a humorous tale / poem in Scots concerning a returning didgeridoo. As with a lot of humour, his musings about the electronic age contained a kernel which will hopefully be explored on a deeper level by the group, the role of technology in our lives and in art-making.

This question stayed with me during the interval and hovered uneasily over Flick and James Hawkins second contribution to the evening with their live painting.

This painting performance utilised the artist’s response to filmed images of nature projected onto the main screen with live images of his painting on a large blue canvas superimposed over them. Whilst the concept of live painting and use of digital media is interesting, I really had to question the use of technology here, which didn’t seem to have much to do with the actual creative process.

This is something any artist grappling with new media really needs to come to grips with. It isn’t enough simply to use technology because it exists. The question of creative intent and the use of technology in art should be paramount, especially in a dominant culture of technological upgrade that accepts any advance as positively cutting edge. The result is often style over substance.

Ragni, aided by a local string quartet, performed to a series of narrative images combining synthesised ambient music with sound effects, strong vocals and guitar. Acoustically the Eastgate presented some problems in terms of the mix of sound, but the combination of drawn images and music was engaging and atmospheric.

Overall the mix of the evening was entertaining and thought-provoking, and I can’t wait to see what emerges next. As the winter draws in the venue will become a more projection-friendly space, and I hope it will be used again for future events and screenings of new work.

John McGeoch and his team are to be congratulated for initiating this first in a series of fortunate events, and whilst the content rested heavily on established partnerships and projects due to the timeframe, it will be fascinating to see what collaborations and possibilities are explored in event no2.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

Links

• Arts in Motion
• More images from No 1 in a Series of Fortunate Events