I painted this wall piece for our second year MFA interim group show in Catalyst Arts gallery last week. The exhibition ran from the evening of Thursday the seventh of January to Saturday the ninth. The wall was repainted white on Sunday. The piece is composed of the ‘double E’ shape I have been using recently repeated in an interlocking pattern. One side is the colour inversion of the other side.
I performed a sonic art piece on the night, where I played live drums along to pre-recorded simple drum patterns. These had been recorded with a metronome and increased in speed by ten beats per minute with each pattern. Each of the nine sections was exactly one minute long.
I limited drums used in both recording and performance to bass drum, hi-hat and snare drum. This minimal approach was in keeping with the minimal palette used on the wall. I wrote a set of rules that loosely governed what I would play for each section:
1, 80BPM Bass drum/stick clicks
2, 90 BPM Bass drum/snare rims
3, 100 BPM Bass drum/hi-hats
4, 110BPM Bass drum/snare (snare off)/hi-hat accents
5, 120BPM Bass drum/snare (snare on)/ hi-hat 16th notes
6, 130 BPM Bass drum/snare/hi-hat/snare rims
7, 140BPM Bass drum/snare (ghost notes)/hi-hat
8,150 BPM Bass drum/snare (note every whole beat)/hi-hat
9, 160 BPM Bass drum/snare/hi hat.
Here is a video clip of the last 3 sections of the performance. It goes out of time with what is played through the amp towards the end. I like the intense, polyrhythmic feel this creates.
The bass drum in front of the work: I tried documenting the piece in various configurations.
The piece with bass drum and amplifier.
John Macormac 