The photograph below shows two recent wall drawings, created in the weeks leading up to culture night Belfast on the 18th of September. A dark blue bass drum has been placed in front of them.

Drawing I

Drawing II

I also made a sound performance piece with Michael O’Halloran that evening, he using guitar and a loop station, and I playing bass drum, hi-hat and snare drum. The rules that governed this were as follows:

‘Loop station Performance’

• The guitar will be playing within a loop that will repeat after a predetermined amount of time.
• The tempo and the key will be fixed, and notes will be improvised within a recurring pattern.
• The pattern will be manipulated with digital effects, but always manipulated as a whole.
• The drums will follow the pattern established by the guitar.
• The performance will last ten minutes.

The performance was intended to augment/activate the drawings in a thoughtful way. Just as they were produced by a process of repetition and layering of individual component shapes, the idea was to layer and repeat notes to eventually achieve a complex build up of sound.

After culture night I decided to leave the bass drum in front of the drawings. The drum’s form is sculptural, the circular shape echoes the shape of the drawing. It is a resonant object both sonically and symbolically.