Exotic Matter Indeed

Natural High Light






Players and The Fabric of the Universe






Huge Projection on the Wall

From the back

The back room of The Old Tannery is where the places of the old pits of unsavoryness have been marked out, by archiologists. The room is now a large and open space filled with atmosphere.

The four record players at the back of the space, played four records. With the four tone arms tied to make four aleatoric loops of sound. The players were all found in some way or another , and functioned in an intermediate fashion. The harmonic chorus came from records that were bought the previous day from the charity shop around the corner. They were; two different bird songs recorded at Ynys Hir , the local nature reserve,a song from Richard Rees, a local man who had sung in the Tabernacle next door, and music from a Twmpath, which is a Welsh Barn Dance.

Near to the record players `The Fabric of the Universe`, a piece made from crocheted deep sea fishing line and about 8 feet in diameter,spread, apparently hovvering just above the floor. The amorphic nature of this piece renders it almost invisible, blended with the floors natural textures and the geometric man made markings on the concrete. Its hyperbolic ripples are explored in greater detail by the constant movement projected onto the wall high above. Loops of texture appear to ripple down the walls and drip from the beams.

The relationship between work and space has reached a premium ,`... in a beautiful conversation with each other.`

The space although relativley full, had given our installation an impression of clarity and expansiveness.The installation gave to the space, a vision of the relationship between the unimaginably huge and the invisibly small.

Its quite ironic really. The piece of film that I , personally liked the least has become the strongest piece in our experiments.

To view more pictures from` Loopholes`

Reflecting Iota on Vinyl

Click here to see a collection of images from Loopholes.

A Very Anti Green Gold Room

Half in Day Light

Spot the Crocheting Hands

Green- Gold Shrine

The little anti room between the two large rooms appeared to be perfect for the huge convex mirror and film pieces. During the day the space was not really dark enough ,with only one opening covered by a curtain. Anyhow, the room instantly became full of curling mysterious movement. The little dirty dark non- space was transformend into a strange alter to the crocheted loop. We went back later one night and our theories were proven. The room filled completely with the crochet film! The walls, the ceiling and the floor were covered in loops...and so were we. Right inside the crochet. Saturated and mesmerised.

The low ceiling in the little space, made the experience close and intense, especially when crocheting hands ran across the room, fingers like tiny alien creatures tending the textile mass.

How very strange.

Spinny Tannery

A short experiment spinning the wormhole around with a camera inside

Several Natural Interventions

Detail Experiment #1

Experiment #2l

Detail Experiment #2

Meditative Jake

Photon Board game

As you come into the Tannery, by the rotten wooden door, the natural light in the first area is astounding. Clear and bright with transient graphlines that appear and dissappear as the weather dictates. The half of the roof that isn`t leathal, is covered in clear plastic, giving a white light and slightly over exposed look to the installation. Carefully placing a battery opperated record player (Numark), in the spaces between the drips and crumbleing masonary, the tone arm was tied with first one, and after a natural intervention, (it fell down!) three strings of Iota. Experiment #2 had Seven Iota strings that spread from the small hole in the roof, and streched down to the record player below, with a natural grace that could not have been engineered by human hand. This was the first of the many instances, which illustrated the buildings inate ability to make our experimental installations, site specific.

We hadn`t really totally considered how or where we would place each piece of work. There were ideas that we had talked about, and we had brought quite a few pieces with us. The Old Tannery itself was the catalyst in our visual chemistry .

The locally purchased record on the turn table was deliberatly warped in situe, on the dashboard of the car, and played a simple and airy loop of Welsh Harp music. The undulations of the record flicked and plucked at the strings of tiny pale Iota, making minute movements in time to the looped rhythmn. The breeze from the open door often joined them in a gust of chorus, lifting dust particles into the equation.

As the sun illuminated the plastic roof , parts of the floor were turned into a grid. The whole installation was periodically revealed to be a slow and patent game of Photon chess.

Light from the Past.

Beautiful but deadly. The roof and Cinnabar moth.

Next doors cat.

We arrived at The Old Tannery, MOMA, Machynllech, for a bit of a reccy and met Pete in the gallery next door. MOMA, Wales have purchased The Old Tannery for renovation, but while plans are being made there have been as series of short exhibitions organised by Pete Telfods organisation Culturecolony. ( http://www.culturecolony.org/).

With the roofers imminantly due, Jake managed to arrange, at lighting speed ,a week in residence there. It was an ideal opportunity to view the film work from the project, and experiment with new installation pieces.

Greeted by a neighbourly cat and a murder of wooden crows purched in the decaying eves.( These were left over from the exhibition before.) the building exudes character and history. Stunningly beautiful with textures and natural light. The floor was littered with dead Cinnabar moths, which occaisionally fluttered to the floor and expired infront of your conversation. But, even this seemed to be an appropriate echo of the Tannerys unsavory chemical past. I hope the refurbishment leaves some of the original behind. We thought it was a suitable venue at the time, but had no idea how the building itself was to infiltrate our work and become our inspiration.

Mirror, Mirror In The Post...

Crazee Legs Bird

Bendigedig ( Welsh for brilliant)!

It`s been a long time since my last entry, so now I`ve got some major catching up to do.

The last entry was your invitation to our show at The Tannery. Thanks to every one that came, although I notice some of you couldn`t make it.Oh Well, a while prior to starting the project, Jake had told me, a while back about this 3D projection experiment he had seen on the television involving a convex mirror. It sounded fantastic , and just the sort of optical illusion I wanted to play around with during the Event Horizon project. After a failed mission with a small and too flat purchase, there it was ,on ebay. A convex security mirror. Wooo-Hoo. Put in a bid, and eventually won it for only 99p. Plus, of course £20.00 for the p&p. Which, incidently, looked like it would happen within 24 hours.( Yeah, right).

After a couple of days spent by the letter box, I made enquiries, and was told that the mirror was in the post or with a courrier and was very large. This size must have inhibited the mobility of the delivery service, because 10 days later, still no mirror. The exhibition was imminent and I was due to leave Tuesday. Stressing gently, I arranged to have a second mirror delivered the next day. Not a chance. It did arrive, eventually, fairplay, but not without some phone calls and a bit more insistant re- arranging.

It is huge, yes, and I do love it to bits. There will be more in another blog entry about its place in the show. But, somewhere in the ether is another lost mirror, bit like a 45" diameter flying saucer, be sure not to miss it if it comes your way. Because it certainly didn`t get here. The sellers did promise to drop all costs, because of the muck-ups.

The photos above were taken in the Tannery. What a stunning and atmospheric place. More about that later.