Layers of Listening and Observing
Thoughts on TRANSLATIONS, performance collaboration
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TRANSLATIONS performance with Matthew Wakefield at the Dolphin Gallery, St. John’s College, Oxford
Although influenced by the people around me, most of the work I produce in the studios is made alone. I process ideas, thoughts and materials by myself. I am keen, however, to open my practice up and work with and alongside other creative people, especially from disciplines other than my own. Over the past few months, I’ve been collaborating with Matthew, a musician, to explore how we can learn from each other’s primary languages (his sound, mine mark) to influence our own. The collaboration has given us the opportunity to explore new stimuli through shared creative acts. We’ve developed ‘TRANSLATIONS,’ a live improvisation-based performance, in which we attempt to reflect our experience of the atmosphere of the space by reacting to sound through mark-making, and mark-making through sound. We invite the audience to help shape our performances by interacting with electronic equipment to affect the soundscape, and I record their part through my drawing.
Rowan Briggs Smith, drawing detail from TRANSLATIONS performance at the Dolphin Gallery, St. John’s College, Oxford
When we began experimenting with this idea of a two-way improv, we were playing with ideas of iteration that stemmed from sound and marks only – I’d react to the sounds by making marks that felt appropriate, and Matthew would use my drawing as stimulus for the following section of music. I imagined this back-and-forth process would pull us into a spiralling, funnelling trajectory, at the end of which everything would converge. This never seemed to happen…