Cell Phrm

Benjamin B. Parkes — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:07:19 +0000

Diego Stocco

Benjamin B. Parkes — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 20:10:49 +0000

Diego Stocco is an experimental musician/artist who has developed a both playful and explorative practice in making his work. Though on his page it states that he is a ‘sound designer/composer’ I feel he, like others, Eno for instance, is leading the way for new musical and audio experiments.

Stocco seems to have boy-like fansination with objects wanting to play with them using his imagination (could be called innovation), much as a child turns its enviroment into whatever fantasy world they desire, Stocco turns his enviroment into and instrument for which he can compose anything from. It reminds me of past audio work of mine where I attempted to turn the soundscape (as I like to call them) of my high street flat into a coherent piece of music, trying to bring order and beauty to otherwise overlooked sounds within our lives.

Susan Hiller: Witness

Benjamin B. Parkes — Mon, 23 May 2011 21:46:20 +0000

Susan Hiller is an American born artist, her practice practice encompassing installation, photography, video and performance. For her work Witness she has gathered first-hand reports of encounters with UFOs or aliens posted on internet sites world-wide. Hiller sees this activity as related to older forms of confession, ways of placing fears into the public arena. Gathering this information becomes an exploration of a kind of contemporary folklore, one in which alien contact is offered as explanation for the inexplicable. The work is like a cave of thin silvery stalactites that turn out to be wires with miniature speakers attached, where one can listen to the testimonies of encounters with UFOs.

“Listening to these people whispering in your ears is like being a priest in a confessional. The whole piece is built upon the shape of the cross and the circle. There are four pathways where you can enter the inner circle of the installation… The religious symbolism of the cross in the circle is crucial because the stories are examples of contemporary visionary experience. Only today people see UFOs where once they saw angels.” - Hiller

Duthie Park: A Musical Reaction

Benjamin B. Parkes — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:58:35 +0000

Here is another one of my recent works. Like the last one I posted all the sounds included in the work are first hand recordings from the space, edited and looped on location in reaction to the space.

The Story of Art School and the Red Tape

Benjamin B. Parkes — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:40:40 +0000

With the degree show just over the hill and everyone around me starting to get tense I find myself dealing with institutionalized red tape (a-fucking-gain). Why do we student artists have to deal with so many barriers when all we are trying to achieve is some form of conclusion to the past four years of blood, sweat, and tears.

Let me put this in context for you. I, for my degree show, have proposed to exhibit four works, two instillations, one photographic/sound piece, and one performance. Originally I proposed to hold most of these within the building at Grays (excluding one of the instillations), but later decided to adapt one of the works so that it could be held outside so not to take up space unnecessarily for a one-off performance. Personally I thought I was being considerate, doing both the school and my fellow students a favour. But all I have seemed to have encountered after proposing this is a massive pile of the proverbial ‘red tape’. Their response was this…

“Anything between both buildings for the duration of the show is problematic – power, security, equipment left outside overnight etc etc…. The quad is a more controllable and safe area but it’s starting to get busy in there.”

I really think they failed to understand the whole notion of this being a ‘one-off’ performance. I only plan to do the performance once… I say again once. Not for the “duration of the show”. And I am now being encouraged not to do the work, something I have spent a long time researching, organizing, and developing so that it could be accommodated. Their main concerns seem to be power, equipment, and that ultimate failure of legislation, health and safety (the legislation of common sense). And I am still unsure as to what major health and safety issues I will encounter. Someone tripping on the cables? Someone eating a cable? Both seems as likely to me. For me it seems to be a waste of both my time and my energy to put so much into this for it to be cancelled just because their worried someone might cause themself a ‘You’ve Been Framed’ moment.

The next problem was the suggestion to hold it in the quad. As I explained in both my proposals is that this performance is extremely loud and would therefore impose on the other work being held there, another reason I considered and the main reason I asked to do it outside the Grays building.

Basically I think the only thing that is causing any problems with this work is the school seeming inability to both understand what I am proposing and they’re lack of encouragement. They clearly have ‘better’ things to deal with. All I want is to feel I achieved something with my time at Grays, and to be able to share that with the public (the whole point in making art, no?)

Benjamin B. Parkes — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:42:18 +0000

Bridge of Dee Flood Tunnels

Benjamin B. Parkes — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:26:06 +0000

This is the first in a series of works I have started where I go to public spaces, some obvious some obscure, and create a piece of music using the objects and natural resonations of the chosen spaces that I feel represent each individual space and my experience of it.

I chose the flood tunnels underneath the Bridge of Dee because it has always intrigued me as a space, the long damp chambers interconnecting, twisting, a labyrinth hidden under the foundations of Aberdeen city. As with all spaces of this nature it remains unoccupied: both humans and animals aware of the dangers when the rivers tide is high. Yet it still has an aura of activity, a life not of the conventional city scape, a calm activity, a soft touch. The tunnels had a fluid ambience, the echos drifting through the space subtlety caressing the hard walls always dwindling before escaping from the cold caverns.

Bridge of Dee Flood Tunnels

And Here It Comes… The Degree Show

Benjamin B. Parkes — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:15:26 +0000

Well it’s that time with the big end of degree show looming its ugly, but very exciting, head. I believe it is costumery for 4th years to begin to freak out at this point, or at least start worrying that everything they’ve done is not good enough, or that they’ll never get everything finished in time, or that they’ll have to compromise their work too much to accommodate their fellow students, etcetera etcetera. So why is it I do not feel worried? Even though I’m just back from holiday where I done no practical work, though my workbook is filling up nicely, and still have a fair amount to do?

I think reasons for my calm state are that I am one of the lucky 4th years who has a clear idea of where they are, what they are doing, and what they need to do to get there. I don’t want to seem over confident because I am considering the worries listed in the previous paragraph and understand that my work may have to go through some drastic changes due to the issue of space, but I think that if I started to freak out now I wouldn’t use my time nearly as efficiently as I should be at this point. I still have quite a bit to do, but, I used my time away to look at where I was from an outsiders point of view and began to grasp the extent of what lay in front of me, both practically and conceptually. And for the first time in my life I saw the advantages of lists. Lists allow you to see the volume of what you have left to do, they convert the magnitude of tasks into easily categorized chunks which you can then set about organising into the most practical plan of action. Praise be to the list!

The only issue I find myself dealing with is that I keep having more and more ideas for works that I want to do for the degree show. But can I really achieve all of them? I guess its a matter of prioritising the ones that are both achievable and fit in with the work I have already been creating. It would be nonsensical of me to start giving up my time to works that are so fresh and out of context to the works I am currently trying to ‘resolve’, as I have been trained to call it. But I do feel it would be a waste not to at least try them out. I don’t want to give up on an idea which could grow into something striking. But I know for a fact that I am not the first, or the last, 4th year art student who has, or is, having this dilemma. All I can actively do is give the ideas a small, but fair, go and from this determine the best course of action.

So onwards and upwards to the finale of my educational life.

Rebbeca Horn

Benjamin B. Parkes — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:35:59 +0000

Rebbeca Horn is a German installation artist wroking since the 1970′s. She has covered many themes in her work, varying from social issues to do with immigration and refugees as well as work that deals with war atrocities. One element of her work that is a constant is her visual style, the symbolic use of stringed instruments as a reference to humanity and our form, and the dexterity of our creations, however destructive.

Tower of The Nameless

In Tower of The Nameless she sets a monument to the refugees from Balkan states in the form of a tower with mechanically playing violins. The hight and motion of the tower representing the huge plight of these refugees, the violins an expression of their bodies.

Concert for Anarchy

In her work Concert for Anarchy a grand piano is suspended upside down from the ceiling by heavy wires attached to its legs. It hangs solidly yet precariously in mid-air, out of reach of a performer, high above the gallery floor. A mechanism within the piano is timed to go off every two to three minutes, thrusting the keys out of the keyboard in a cacophonous shudder. The keys, ordinarily the point of tactile contact with the instrument, fan disarmingly out into space. At the same time, the piano’s lid falls open to reveal the instrument’s harp-like interior, the strings reverberating at random. This unexpected, violent act is followed between one and two minutes later by a retraction as the lid closes and the keys slide back into place, tunelessly creaking as they go.

Catalogue Photos

Benjamin B. Parkes — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 13:05:27 +0000