Last Saturday Dr Robin Price and I performed a specially composed, structured improvisational performance as part of Rule Driven in Platform Arts in Connswater shopping centre. The drum kit was prepared with piezo microphones and augmented with a Roland SPD-SX sample pad.
As they were played, these sent signals to Robin who manipulated them using a bank of modular synthesisers, effects units and a space echo. Thousands of lines of C++ code translated signals from the drums in to lines that formed repeating triangles beamed from a heavy duty laser. These repeated regular forms echoed those present in the drawings. The triangles were also projected on to the sculpture. Midi signals from the sample pad allowed the projection to be reset.
The gallery is located in a busy shopping centre mall. Priceless reactions from passers by ranged from interest to utter bewilderment.
Robin Price is an artist-inventor, trans-disciplinary physicist, musician and cat enthusiast. He holds an MPhys in Theoretical Physics from the University of Wales, Swansea and a PhD in Composition and Creative Practice from Queen’s University, Belfast. Recent solo exhibitions include Escape Sequenceat CCA, Derry~Londonderry, Lambent Ambient, R-Space, Lisburn and Air of the Anthropocene at University of Atypical, Belfast. His work is held in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s public collection and has been covered in Source Magazine, New Scientist and the Guardian.
“I use electronics, algorithms, code, glitches and hacked objects to push at the boundaries of what is technologically and ecologically possible, permissible and ethical. My approach is playful, experimental and publicly engaged.
My work comes from personal experience. I’m an outsider artist who trained not in art but physics and music who works primarily with new materials to try and make concentrated moments of wonder or joy an audience can carry away with them; making a memory that stands out against the background urban hellscape. This approach came out growing up around the tail end of the UK rave scene, living for the weekend and beginning my creative practice putting on visuals for local promoters. I often work with children and first became interested in the environment at a young age, this points towards the playfulness, connection with the inner child and environmental themes in my work. Theoreticians that have influenced my practice are Rachel Carson, Lev Manovich, Timothy Morton, Simon Reynolds and Lakoff and Johnson.”
