Install view, Access Space, Sheffield, May 2016
Still from video, shown on loop.
Work shown at Access Space, Sheffield (May 2017). S E A S C R I P T explored a single aspect of Britten’s opera Peter Grimes: the representation of the sea, and the role of scripts and scores in music production. Hugely inspired by Frank Bridge’s The Sea, Britten gives the changing character of the sea a role of its own in his opera. Agnes Martin’s 1963 work The Wave suggests the sea using minimalist graphic notation. As well as two new works on paper, both 'scores' for the sea, and a film work on loop, I displayed three paper pianola music rolls. Acting as score, and somehow also as a recording, for player pianos, these are fed into the pianola manually. The machine reads the perforations to make the prescribed sound. Despite the physical programming of the paper roll, the pianola (human) 'player' can effect real variation in speed and volume. The rolls, like waves, represent variation possible within repetition and proscription.
The exhibition is silent – there is no sound on the video loop, and my painted and perforated ‘scores’ (as well as the pianola music rolls) hang inertly against the walls. Sound is suggested and scripted in the exhibition, but not performed or heard.
Install view, Access Space, Sheffield, May 2016
Still from video, shown on loop.