Chamber Graves....

Entrance to Unstan Chambered Cairn, Orkney. 

Section drawing of burial mound and burial chamber as it looked when the grave from Mammen was opened up in 1868.

I recently discovered the existence of Chamber graves...I was discussing places in which sound resonates to a friend at a party and he mentioned the Chamber graves as a reference to spaces that hold a certain sound quality. The relation of the chamber very much links to my own project, 'Internal Chamber'. For this year, I would be interested in looking at these old historic structures in more depth and going up north to record my voice within them. Then with the recordings and understanding the quality of sound that the chambers create, I would love to re-create one of these spaces and create a new performance space in Dundee. 

"Many societies communicate with ancestors or spirit worlds through altered states of consciousness. Altered states can be achieved in many different ways, and often involve sound. It is possible that people inside inadvertently generated infrasonic sounds that could exert a physiological or psychological influence upon. "

http://www.monumental.uk.com/site/research/proj/acoustics/maeshowe.html

I'm back...

After my wonderful experience away in Milan, I am back and ready to face my final year of my journey at art school...

A lot has happened in the time that I have been away and it is going to be very interesting to see how it all transcends into my final body of work. There are so many ideas that I have had over my time at Uni and just haven't had the energy to push and create them. So for this year my focus will be to direct my energy and project everything that I have been hiding and leaving unfinished...

There has also been changes in which I have had no control, but that will definitely my final year. I have lost a great friend and artistic collaborator and I will miss his presence and working with him, we had so many projects to still make together and it will be hard to face the final year without him. But as this is the nature of life and the ephemeral quality of humanity, I will definitely embrace his absence and treasure his memory, for he was a wonderful person and someone that I hope has found a better path.

After facing many things whilst being away and re-finding my confidence and strength, I now feel ready to amends with my experience in Dundee. It definitely hasn't been an easy journey and there has been a lot of struggle in finding my identity and fighting to keep my visions clear. What they never tell you about being an artist is that it is a very lonesome journey, but in a sense we can only project ourselves, so the process of making work is very much like guiding yourself to the invisible...

At times it has felt like being within a great dark space, trying to find a light or a way out but in saying this, I feel I have finally found a way out and now I am ready to leave this space and move towards the end, my final journey in which I will walk towards myself...