Today’s Dundee Pop-Up Tour (which I’m currently sat right in the middle of, having been slightly over-stimulated by 6 hours of non-stop inspiration and brilliant chat) began for me at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, with a series of talks from recent Masters graduates.

Jeanette Ginslov kicked things off via a Skype link from Denmark. Her project ‘Concrete’ which she described as a kinaesthetic work, is a short film featuring a complex and engaging arrangement of dancers, environment and sound.
Rather than a linear narrative, Ginslov interrogates the sounds and gestures of the performers and their environments,  and the  filming and editing process  becomes a part of the piece too.

Ginslov successfully blends these themes and processes by attempting to “break the frame… drawing the audience in” For her, “affecting the audience is the ultimate goal – firing off motor neurons, stimulating…”. The “concrete emotional displays of erotic love and happiness, an emotion for each environment” is almost a conduit for exploring her unique methodology. The dancers perform a very contemporary contact improvisation which Ginslov not only directs but attempts to become an intimate part of via reactive camerawork and ‘choreo-editing’.

Catt Le Marr graduated in Media Imaging, and explores sound. Le Marr carefully picks apart patterns and formations between images and noise, through processes she describes as ‘Sonic Semblance’ and ‘Rhythmanalysis’. Citing John Cage as a major inspiration, Le Marr attempts to make the visual, audible and showed us visual scores based on the traced horizons of landscape photography. Le Marr continually pushes at her process, developing ideas via circuit building, coding and using software such as ‘arduino’, mappin movements of birds onto midi-grids, programming “the musicality of natural rhythm”. She’s actively engaged with her peers too, developing the experimental Music/Arts Fest N_ilk.
(By chance we bumped into Catt again later on when were on a tour of the DCA Screenprint facility, where she was busily learning new techniques. Truly a renaissance woman!)

Jo Hodge followed up a degree in Textiles with a Masters in Design, and now works with wearable technology. Jo’s process is both fascinating and down to earth, using Transformation Design techniques such as cultural probes and group workshops to make clothes which are unique to the user and attempt to deal with consumerist over-consumption ans sustainability. Experimenting with complex thermographic and photochromic smart materials, it was fantastic to see real craft and experimentation being merged with contemporary theory and resulting in innovate real-world products.

It was an inspiring start to a fascinating day… I’ll update this post with links to their work as and when they appear on the site. I’m off for the second round now – the THIS IS talks… more soon.

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.