Bits of silver crystalline crayfish

James Charlton: dForm
MIC Toi Rerehiko
22 November – 20 December 2008

This work by James Charlton seems to straddle the practices of artists as diverse as Simon Ingram and Daniel Crooks, exploring programming procedures that have unpredictable results and transmuting digital treatments of ephemeral images to make three-dimensional objects.

He presents three interrelated exhibitions:

The first gallery, at the top of the stairs, with dForm, features three machines with turntables, on which are vertical cylinders of soft clay. Machines individually awaken and spasmodically start to modify their clay forms, starting to spin when sensors detect movement. As the day’s visitors negotiate the space their collective trajectories affect the prodding and goosing of the damp, earthy columns.

Theoretically the three dForm ‘artworks’ created each day are unique though I suspect only James Charlton would be able to tell them apart. Strangely they are ignominiously dumped in a pile on the floor, and occasionally broken. (In the catalogue Charlton is so process obsessed he dismisses the clay results as ‘crudely created lumps’ and seems unwilling to accept the performance residue as ‘art’ – in great contrast to the equivalent forms displayed in 16: sec.)

Around the corner from dForm (deform, 3Dform?) is plus. Here collective movements generate through web cams on the ceiling a composite image on the screen and an evolving soundtrack. The marks on the large screen change direction and the cumulative formation of shapes alter, as people enter and leave the room.

So far Charlton’s process-based show is distant, dry and icy – though perhaps that depends on your tastes. For me, it is specialist boffin material that is not wildly exciting, yet the last room is a surprise. It succeeds in taking his ideas somewhere else.

The use of accumulated movement in plus Charlton has developed further in 16: sec with sixteen looped videos made by filming rubbish being blown about on the street. Using a stereo-lithography machine he has converted the digital camera files so that they cumulatively can be rendered into 3D form (he says ‘as a computer controlled tube of toothpaste that builds up a form layer after layer’) using plaster that is then electroplated in iridescent silver.

Singly the sixteen sculptures are quite extraordinary in their own right – as bizarre crystalline growths that are like spiny crayfish parts - independent of the amazing process that lead to their creation from digital filming. Yet I can’t help but wish Charlton had put either each sculpture with its original generating film, or else placed them on a pile on the floor, as in dForm, so they become a tighter spatial entity, an alarming, highly evocative, Sci-fi construction. The installation is very good, but it could have been stunning.

16: sec is remarkable nonetheless. It is very unusual. Don’t miss it.

(Many thanks to the artist for the above images.)

Performimg with other musical bodies as instruments

Phil Dadson: Bodytok
Starkwhite
4 September – 26 September 2008

Phil Dadson is well known in this country and abroad for his work in the pioneer musical group From Scratch, and his various solo sound projects. In 2006 he had an installation in the New Gallery when he was a finalist in the last Walters Prize.

So what is he up to here at Starkwhite, with this Bodytok project? It is an archive where he has filmed a wide range of people, from different cultural backgrounds, to make elementary rhythmical sounds, using their own body as an instrument – and not singing.

So, without using vocal chords, they can make clicking, squeaking, whirring sounds (like Victor Borge) by compressing their cheeks or manipulating their tongues and lips, or they can clap, jiggle, rub or do whatever is necessary to create strange bodily aural effects.

This Starkwhite show is a test run with three plasma screens that the visitor activates by approaching the sensors at the front. She or he can stop and start them at will, thereby orchestrating the recorded performances and using them as instruments in a group, so the different sound patterns overlap. Three performers at once, like From Scratch. It’s a very clever idea.

The trouble is Dadson likes people too much. The faces are so interesting, with their expressions of intense shyness, laughter, or initial embarrassment (one person performs under a bucket), that they distract. You forget about the sonic dimension and just think in terms of psychology – how nice it is to see these interactions with Dadson’s camera and mike.

But the warmth of this visual appeal is counterproductive for the gallery visitor, the potential performer and manipulator of archives. To really make the sound samples work in a controlled, integrated fashion, I think, just the aural recordings should be used, so they can be listened to more intensely and analysed, with no visual distractions. It makes it easier to concentrate.

The counter-argument is that maybe for some visitors that method is far too dry, too abstract, too detached. It removes the lead-in into the recorded performances, the human touch. It won’t encourage participation in the gallery.

Perhaps with these comments I’m taking the project’s potential too seriously and am missing the point. Dadson (and technical collaborator James Charlton) will no doubt discover in time the efficacy of his idea and if visitors do interact as desired. We’ll have to wait and see.

(Not all the above images are in the Starkwhite show, but they clearly indicate the nature of Dadson's project.)