Artefact 6155

22" x 28" Pen and ink on Fabriano pape

Monotype MIDI

Monotype is a casting system for moveable metal type using a keyboard, punch-tape and matrix (mould). Patented in 1885, this revolutionary technology greatly improved the speed and often quality, of typesetting for Letterpress printing. Due to the complexity of the Monotype system, it is almost impossible to take a punch-tape from an unknown printing house and decode the text which has been encoded onto it. There are approximately 30,000 possible arrangements of the moulds which correspond to the holes punched in the tape according to the needs of the job at hand. Inspired by these encrypted patterns of binary holes, this custom software application maps and transcodes the language of mechanical typesetting into musical space. The software reads input text and implements various mappings including the numbers associated with traditional 'lay of the case', frequency of letter use, word aggregates. Ultimately these numbers are used to generate pitches and durations of notes as MIDI events which are used to trigger external synthesisers. Letters and words become sounds and spaces are silence. Texts with varying typeset details express their inner musicality – body copy rhythm, poetic meter and structure. This work was created in Processing using the MIDIbus Library and would not be possible without the generous support of the Open Source community

Being an Architect in the Anthropocene : Material Matters

Along with my colleague, India Czulowska-Burns and student Eliza Holmes we presented our work with Stage 1 students around Material Use and designing in the age of the Antropocene. This event was part of the wider Architecture Fringe 2023 programme. Other panellists included: Sofie Pelsmakers (Tampere University); Joe Morris (Morris & Company); Essi Nisonen (Tampere University) and Cíaran Malik: (Kingston University)

Skarbyntsya {СКАРБНИЦЯ} vol II (Fundraiser Event for Ukraine 2023)

Currently the war in Ukraine is still going on. ‘Intercept 1’ is a response to this event. The work proposes an acoustic account of the invasion in Ukraine. Utilising military transceivers, signals were intercepted from high ground in Scotland, Italy, Greece, Switzerland and Serbia following the initial invasion. All relevant military and civilian frequencies were monitored for activity in the Shortwave Spectrum. It is indicative that the British Broadcasting Corporation resumed activity in the Short-Wave Spectrum shortly after the attack on Ukraine. This renewed interest of what was considered by many to be an obsolete technology came as a response to radio communications showing excessive activity, and becoming relevant again as a means of communication that can both bridge large geographical distances, and is continued to be a method of communication that is reliable, sustainable and easy to maintain for military personal and civilians alike. The Shortwave Spectrum of Frequencies is more accessible to the public, has a broader frequency range and has been a key acoustic landscape that has housed communications since the Second World War. Contrary to more advanced digital radio, satellites, and telephone lines shortwave radio is less susceptible to interference and remains unaffected by geography and weather, requiring minimum power to operate. The equipment is more battel tested and reliable and less vulnerable to cyber-attacks, relying on less sophisticated electronics. Shortwave cannot be hacked. It cannot be bombed or otherwise destroyed because it is being transmitted from far outside Ukraine. Shortwave is notoriously difficult to jam. ‘INTERCEPT’ is an account of a war in a medium that is not meant for civilians. The sound piece records the communications that are relevant to the invasion and the struggle of Ukraine to resist. The Shortwave Spectrum is an acoustic landscape that in many ways mirrors the Theatre of War. Operationally crucial and with extensions to a war of disinformation the signals are not only fingerprints of activity, but also an acoustic mirror of aggression and resistance. To this day a new joint assessment released by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission, and the United Nations, estimates that the cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine has grown to US $411 billion (equivalent of €383 billion). A current estimate calculates 21 million civilians being directly affected, 18 million are identified as ‘in need’ with further 18.000 civilian casualties reported so far. Skarbnytsya is a Glasgow based exhibition and print sale which celebrates and raises awareness of Ukrainian artists. The core values of Skarbyntsya are to bring the public’s attention to young independent creatives and artists who have been displaced by the Ukrainian-Russian War 2022 and to provide a network between these makers with creatives in Glasgow. The raised funds donated to exhibiting Ukrainian artists and Lviv National Academy of Art

Fashioning the Artist: Artistic Dress in Victorian Britain 1848-1900

This research comprises a study focused on Artistic Dress circa 1848-1900, presenting a roughly chronological survey that seeks to further our knowledge on its development, varied manifestations, and influence, both during its time and on subsequent fashion trends. While Artistic Dress is a category that is acknowledged in the current literature on fashion history, it has had limited and at times conflicting treatment. It is most often employed to describe sartorial codes in which significant arts practitioners and patrons—particularly those associated with Pre-Raphaelitism, the Arts and Crafts Movement, Aestheticism, and Art Nouveau—wore (and at times designed and promoted) clothes that were frequently labelled in contemporary literature as ‘artistic’ or ‘aesthetic’. These descriptors designated such clothing to be of a unique and creative calibre, but also outside the norm. As such, it has been a subject of interest for art and fashion historians, but usually only approached marginally within the scope of larger studies on related artistic movements, or within studies of larger fashion histories on nineteenth century dress and/or Dress Reform. This thesis offers a closer examination of Artistic Dress than has previously been undertaken. The methodology for this research was to compile a history of the phenomenon of Artistic Dress derived from relevant primary source material, including (where possible) actual clothing, images (photographs and paintings), and text (correspondence, memoirs, and periodicals) related to selected ‘artistic dressers.’ Through this, I hope to identify whether there are in fact differences in the aforementioned related terms, and whether we might be able to position Artistic Dress as an umbrella term that is the most appropriate classification for the alternative sartorial trends found in artistic circles in Victorian Britain, offering a solution to this terminological quandary in dress history. It is hoped that in clarifying this term, other styles such as Aesthetic Dress and Reform Dress—and their relation to artistic practice—may be better understood. In this way, it is intended that this research will enrich the body of knowledge in the areas of both the History of Fashion, and of British Visual Culture

Acts of Making / Acts of Transgression

This paper was presented on 'Delightful Fun' Conference, The Glasgow School of Art, Grace & Clark Fyfe Gallery and Bourdon Lecture Theatre, 3 December 2024 -13 December 2024 This initiative celebrates the legacy of British architect Cedric Price (1934- 2003) through a touring exhibition and associated events at several UK Schools of Architecture: RGU Aberdeen (9-31 October); ESALA, Edinburgh (11-22 November); GSA, Glasgow (December); Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent (January); BCU, Birmingham (February); and London Met (March). The exhibition’s centrepiece at the MSA features an original market stall prototype from the Drawing Matter Collection, designed by Price and never previously exhibited. Alongside this prototype, a range of archival materials—including prints of original drawings, texts, ephemera, film extracts, and audio recordings—offers a glimpse into the diversity of Price’s practice and the interdisciplinary conversations that animated it. In the spirit of Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt project, this initiative seeks to disseminate, interrogate, collect, and share knowledge on the move, thereby embodying the dynamism, expediency, and inclusiveness that characterised each of his projects. “Delightful Fun: A Cedric Price Thinkbelt for Our Times” is an invitation to think with Price on how to embrace usefulness, timeliness, and delight as key architectural values today, and how these may outline a more permeable profession that responds to current environmental and social challenges. The paper thinks through Cedric Price’s vision that a ‘building can accommodate an ever-shifting brief’ and applies to contemporary events. With the recent upheaval in Ukraine and Palestine the paper thinks through the most transgressive act of making and utilizes examples from contemporary fine art practice to discuss the potential and consequence in pedagogies that aspire to follow, comment and action current events. Utilising Slavoj Zizek’s ideas on the concept of the ‘unknown unknowns’ the paper proposes that there are classifications in the creative act and the pedagogies that surround them. Frequently escaping the confines of specialism whilst also to a large extend being defined in approach and methods by them, the creative act ( by definition or position – a transgressive act) can only come to it’s full potential when the plan is as loose in it’s approach as it is in its making and the last exit in a long-standing history of debates about the utility and actualization of change in society. The paper will consider current active projects that seek to change paradigms and can only succeed by themselves becoming transgressive acts by adopting qualities of anti-aesthetic and respond to the constant need of a shifting horizon of utility and a form that serves more than the intended purpose and function

Necessary Sequels

[Solo Exhibition

Fully Awake

Fully Awake was a group show, and part of a series of exhibitions organised by Teaching Painting on the subject of British art school education. The exhibition took place at Blip Blip Blip in Leeds. The project involved each invited artist making a selection of one artist who had at some point taught them, and another who had been their student. To this end, I selected works by Carol Rhodes and Georgia Horgan. Rhodes was represented by a drawing, 'Quarry' (2000), while Horgan displayed a recently completed film 'All Whores are Jacobites' (2017). The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue, and featured a short text written by myself. This text questioned the methods through which the success of a pedagogic approach could be ascertained, and the appropriateness of using stylistic traits as a means of determining a meaningful relationship between teaching staff and their students. It reflected upon the value of maintaining a practice visibly outside an art school framework, and the important effect this has on students themselves looking to establish an autonomous practice upon the completion of their time in higher education