30000fps is an anonymous Berlin based visual artist working within the confines of one to two second animated loops that produce a wide range of optical and emotional sensations upon viewing. We got in touch to find out more about the unidentified creative behind the site.

Why did you start the site?
30000fps was initially a side project of mine, and I still treat it more like a sketchbook than anything else, a place where I can post experiments in visual loop making. I come from a graphic design and fine arts background and over the last few years started moving more toward animation and video. I’ve always been a curious person and a lot of the works stem from asking simple questions like – what would it look like to stand inside a perfectly mirrored sphere? What would you see? I take that approach with all of my animations.

I try to stay focused on some of the themes that interest me, but it’s a long list. Mainly futurology – space travel, artificial intelligence, and nostalgia for obsolete technology. I’m also inspired by many early works of op-art, light art, video art, plus different optical and physical phenomena like the ganzfeld effect, interference patterns, cymatics, schlieren photography…

Over time the site has sort of taken on a life of its own and now has a small following, but in the beginning it wasn’t as active. The name has to do with my interest in optics and imaging technology, including high speed photography. 30000fps is an effect best seen in real life – http://goo.gl/WP3XCA.

As much as I enjoy working digitally, I’m also inspired a lot by the real world. Lately I’ve been aiming to make loops that you can watch for longer periods of time, trying to emulate real sensations like the light reflecting off of waves in a river or lake, or the feeling of flying through the air or traveling through space. Certain seamless loops can produce strange afterimages while others have a hypnotizing effect – especially when you can’t tell where the loop point is.  They almost exist outside of time. There’s a certain power in that.

Aside from making gifs, one of my goals is to get more involved in some of the new developments in augmented and virtual reality. The idea of VR was just a tease when I was younger (PowerGlove), but seems like it’s about to bring about a very big shift in the coming years. I think the perceived border between the digital world and the real world is collapsing and it will be really fascinating to see where things are headed.

08.04.2015

10.04.2015

What’s your day job?
Right now I work as a freelance motion and graphic designer, so I’m usually dreaming up animations or doing some print design on the side (books and records). But I always come back to 30000fps. I have to say I’m really humbled every day by the following that the site has gained, and it’s thanks to everyone that stops by and shares the images or writes to me that keeps it going.

There will be a new series involving light and refraction coming out later in the year, an edition of prints available for sale, and also more new stuff coming out on 30000crt and regular posts at 30000fps. Stay tuned!

Favourite animation:
Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero by Charles and Ray Eames.

Favourite Wikipedia pages:
Timeline of the far future | Extraterrestrial Skies | Tesseracts | Simulation hypothesis | Eternal Return | Schlieren photography

Follow 30000fps on Tumblr here.

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Detail view, “I am the horizon”, (2015) Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I studied art from the 9th grade on. Since the age of 15 I wanted to be an artist. Although my perception of it developed, I have lived this activity intensively since then.

I studied my BA degree for 5 years (3 years painting and two years fine art) in a small town in Portugal called Caldas da Rainha. I believe no one made this school his or her first choice but the last possibility. The result was a hippie, very experimental school that started from 6pm, when we would return home to make dinner for friends, go out and go wild. It was the time to reinvent ourselves and do our own thing. We did a lot of self-organised projects and we worked with little means. The last 2 years of the 5-year course brought in subjects like Political Studies that increased our capacity to think and establish our own ethos.

I was an assistant to a writer and translator of philosophy who had worked as an artist for 20 years. The books he translated shaped my readings from the age of 15. I also worked for the artist Pedro Cabrita Reis who taught me a lot and gave me a greater capacity to work.

Where do you make your work?
I live in Vienna, Austria, where I have a studio that I share with Christoph Meier and Nicola Pecoraro. We have a strong sense of community, and there’s also place for critical sarcasm, since a joke can push the work somewhere else with its critical distance. I could also say that I work everywhere, because I read in the toilet, in bed, on the metro; I work directly in galleries or institutional exhibition spaces and I love to work directly in the streets. It’s hard to disconnect when I’m working and when I’m not. And this is wrong! One should be critical to this neo-liberal way of working. Labour is a key tool to transform the way we live. On the other hand, art is not exactly labour… it’s a job but it’s also a pleasure…

Detail view, Low (2013-15), from the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

Installation view, I Like Your Art Much (2015), Hugo Canoilas from the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

What is your work process/technique?
All and none. I do everything and nothing. I don’t want to be a specialist and I don’t want to be recognised for my skills. Art being understood as a skill is like judging the work of a writer by his calligraphy.

Can you describe what a typical day is like?
Let me say that I’m plural! I am many things… I aim to be in permanent motion. I have this erotic-Dionysian force that is the opposite of the jubilation of the fixed, achieved form or idea. So I don’t repeat many things in my everyday life (i.e. having the same breakfast for years) apart from taking my daughter to school and going back home early in the evening to have dinner with my family.

Installation view, Visitors, (2015), To be read aloud, To be read aloud (2014) and Chevy, (2015), from the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

Performance photo, Jeffrey goes to Dundee, (2015) Performance during the Preview of the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

Where do you find your inspiration?
I don’t know if this word is used in the right way. Usually “inspiration” pushes us back to the cliché in art and I’m not into this. Taking the word as it is I inspire as much as I can from the world, from the whole and I try to give it back to that whole that is the people. Since I aim to have what I don’t have, I think and make, in ways that will produce a change of my self; to be another or to try to live many lives in one life; following your question, I’m inspired by the absolute otherness.

What are your future plans?
When my daughter goes to University I would love to move to the countryside and build a house and have my garden with my wife. Maybe we would invite friends or open it to all, like a small non “ecophagic” way of living with the contradiction of going somewhere else to exhibit from time to time. I could dedicate my time to working in a barn, behind the house, building a secretive work that could be developed through the years. Plough in my stomach, work without serving anyone else’s project or agenda (artistic or political), that is the only way you can respect the whole. The whole should be a space of convergence of all differences, even the non-negotiable ones.

Detail view, I Like Your Art Much (2015), from Francisco Sousa Lobo to Hugo Canoilas, for the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD.

Hugo Canoilas with painting in bed, 2015, Los Angeles. Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK.

Someone a long time ago, now. is on display at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD until 10 April.

All photos courtesy of Hugo Canoilas, Cooper Gallery DJCAD and Workplace Gallery, UK unless otherwise stated.

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Edinburgh Art Festival has just announced its programme for 2015. This year sees international artists introduced to Scottish audiences for the first time including Americans Tara Donovan and John Chamberlain, Korean artist Kwang Young Chun and the late German artist Hanne Darboven. There will also be the chance to see new works by artists Toby Paterson, Sara Barker, Charles Avery and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd as well as early career artists from the open call still to be determined. We got in touch with EAF’s Director, Sorcha Carey to find out more.

Portrait of Sorcha Carey

If you only had one day in Edinburgh on a limited budget, what five exhibitions would you recommend not to miss?
Most of our programme is free, and Edinburgh is supremely walkable, so there would be a whole host of options. If the weather’s nice, I’d recommend a morning walk down to Inverleith House to see the John Chamberlain, and then continuing on along the Waters of Leith to Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop to see Toby Paterson, with Rhubaba just around the corner. After lunch in town, you could take in Hanne Darboven at the Talbot Rice Gallery, and Kwan Young Chun at Dovecot. Then if you’re super keen, you could pop into Phyllida Barlow, at the Fruitmarket, conveniently located just next to the train station (and the café does great cakes, if you’re in need of a pick me up).

Inverleith House: John Chamberlain, ‘Miss Lucy Pink’, 1962. Painted and chromium-plated steel. 47 × 42 × 39 inches (119.4 × 106.7 × 99 cm) Private collection. © 2015 Fairweather & Fairweather LTD/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photography by David Heald. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

Dovecot Studios: Kwang Young Chun, ‘Aggregation 06 – JN028’, 2006. 250cm diameter. Mixed media with Korean mulberry paper.

This is your fifth year as Festival Director. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned since your first EAF festival and how has your approach now changed?
I remember coming across that wonderful Beckett quote after my first festival – Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better – and it has kept me company since then. It speaks to me of that tightrope you walk, wanting to do better each year, but also needing to be ready to fail. I have a much greater understanding of our context now – both the city itself, and what it becomes in August. And one certainty about festivals is that they will always surprise you – each year has its own energy, and at a certain point you have to let go and allow the festival be what it wants to be that year!

The festival seems to encourage works which sits outside of the traditional gallery space. Can you give us a preview of what visitors might expect on Edinburgh’s streets?
Programming work for public spaces is at the heart of what we do – it’s one of the ways in which we try and make contemporary practice more accessible, as well as to engage in a lively conversation with our context. Last year, we were fortunate enough to work with the Indian curator Vidya Shivadas, and something she said to me on one of her visits really stuck with me, and has provided the inspiration for this year’s programme. ‘Sorcha, you live in a picture postcard‘, she said. There are definitely moments when Edinburgh feels like more an illustration in a book than a real place, and this year’s programme explores that tension. There’s a strong strand in contemporary practice, of artists who create quite self-contained worlds – they are entirely invented, but they provide really important ways to think about and reflect on real lived experiences. So visitors to Edinburgh in August will have a unique opportunity to encounter a series of fictional worlds in a city which itself keeps one foot in the world of the real, one in the world of the imagination (the mad god’s dream, as Hugh MacDiarmaid described Edinburgh).

Fruitmarket: Phyllida Barlow. Installation view: dock. Tate Britain, London, 31 March – 19 October 2014.

Ingleby Gallery: Charles Avery, ‘Detail of Untitled (Dancers outside the MoA, Onomatopoeia)’, 2012. Pencil, ink, acrylic and gouache on paper. 83.5 x 114 cm (image size). Private collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh.

Christine Borland, Craig Coulthard and yourself will select a minimum of three early career artists from the open call. What are you looking for from the applicants?
We really want the festival to provide more opportunities for artists trying to develop a full-time practice in Scotland, and our new platform for early career artists is one way in which we are trying to support this,
I can’t speak for my fellow selectors, but I’m looking forward to being surprised, to encountering new work and approaches that I’ve not seen before, and having the opportunity to share that with our audiences.

As the only annual Scottish international contemporary art festival, how does this year’s festival address Scotland’s cultural heritage?
One of the things which makes our festival programme so unique, is that we are not exclusively focussed on contemporary art. While this is definitely one of the core strengths of our programme, we also always have a really strong range of historic shows also. So this year, as well as new work by contemporary practitioners, both the Queen’s Gallery and City Art Centre are showing survey shows of historic Scottish work stretching right back to Ramsay and Wilkes. I think this provides a really interesting context, to see the latest generation of Scottish artists against a backdrop of over 200 years of extraordinary art making.

A festival on this scale with anticipated audience figures of over 300,000 must take its toll. What are your plans for 31 August and when do start planning the 2016 festival?
Yes – September is definitely a time for catching up on sleep (and re-reading Beckett!). We’ve already started planning for 2016, though as ever, there’s still a lot to do…

The festival runs for one month this summer from 30 July – 30 August. See the full programme online here.

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Graham Fagen appears admirably calm and collected as he presents the work he will be showing at the 56th Venice Biennale to a room full of journalists. He jokes about early aspirations of playing for Scotland on the football field and it feels fitting that he will have the chance to represent his country within the arts world. Curated by Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Scotland, Fagen’s exhibition will be held in the Palazzo Fontana, a new exhibition space for Scotland in Venice. He will be exhibiting new work across a series of rooms including a bronze rope/tree sculpture, an audio piece, a selection of drawings and a multi-channel AV installation.

One of the pieces to be shown explores a poem by Robert Burns. The Slave’s Lament is a recorded musical performance by the Scottish Ensemble. Graham worked with composer Sally Beamish, musician Ghetto Priest and music producer Adrian Sherwood to include references to reggae, folk songs and classical music in this ambitious piece. It encompasses a 5 channel AV installation whereby four of the channels will be linked to four screens. Each screen will show a video of the individual musician playing the piece and as the viewer approaches any one particular screen, that instrument will be singled out to be heard more clearly as the visitor gets nearer.

Production image, (L-R: Diane Clark and Graham Fagen), Graham Fagen, The Slave’s Lament, 2015. Photo: Holger Mohaupt.

Production image, (L-R: Graham Fagen, Sally Beamish, Ghetto Priest and Jonathan Morton), Graham Fagen, The Slave’s Lament, 2015. Photo: Holger Mohaupt.

What do you ask one of the most influential artists working in Scotland today? We had quite a few things to put to Graham, but decided to open up this opportunity to all of you in our Ask Graham feature and we’re glad we did! Below are Graham’s responses.

Q: Central Station

The exhibition at Venice has been curated by Hospitalfield Arts. How much input have they had into your work?
They’re helping me achieve the work that I want to make. I suppose their input comes in the shape and form of help and support. I’m working with Jane who is the Producer of the project and she’s working with Hospitalfield to help me make what I’m trying to make.

As one of the largest and most prestigious visual arts exhibition in the world, how have you dealt with the pressure of creating work for the Venice Biennale?
As an artist you deal with your own pressure; the pressure’s always from yourself. In my experience, it doesn’t really matter who you’re making the exhibition for. You’re working to the pressure of yourself. You want to do the best job that you can. It doesn’t matter if it’s for the gallery at the flat of one of your friends or whether it’s at the Venice Biennale. That pressure that you get is from yourself about doing the best that you can is the most important pressure to pay attention to.

Graham Fagen, Guerro/Giardino, 2015, neon and acrylic, 180 x 60 x 12cm. Photo: Graham Fagen.

Q: artist Liz West

What does a day in your life look like?
A mess! [Laughs] I suppose it depends on what job I’m working on. We’re in Glasgow Sculpture Studios just now so I’ve been spending some time in the studio. Some days I’m down in the workshops. I’ve got a studio at home so some days I’m working there. Sometimes I’m at Powder Hall Bronze in Edinburgh. Some days I’m editing with the editor I work with. Sometimes I’m in London, sometimes I’m travelling. I’ve got an opening in Berlin in two weeks time, so it’s lots of different things. There’s no typical day. There’s days where you’re having to do different jobs; you’re doing the job that needs to be done on that particular day.

What made you decide to become an artist?
That’s a good question. I don’t think it’s something that I’ve consciously decided to do. It’s only fairly recently when somebody’s asked me what I do that I’ve had the confidence to say I’m an artist. I did an undergrad in sculpture in Glasgow and I was able to make things that people were interested in, but I didn’t know at that time why they should be interested in what I was making. For me there was something missing. I did a masters in architecture and I read a book by Irwin Pernovsky called Scholastic Philosophy in Gothic Architecture. That book did a really simple thing of connecting a philosophy with form, also connecting form with philosophy. That book was a revelation for me. It gave me the thing that was missing. It gave me the reason why I could make something and why people should take it seriously. I suppose that’s what I’ve been trying to do as an artist.

Does teaching interrupt your ability to practice?
I’ve been lucky in that it hasn’t. I don’t teach full time. I’m on a fractional contract and I get a lot of support from Duncan of Jordanstone to do my own work. A percentage of my contract is for research and a percentage is for teaching. There’s times like doing this project and times when I’ve been doing projects in the States and I’ve gone and lived there. Duncan of Jordanstone have always been very supportive and allowed me that time to do the work. On the contrary, rather than the teaching getting in the way, the teaching has actually helped to support and enable me to do the things that I do. Also, at times you can get too close to your work and on the days you’re teaching, it’s a privilege to change the head for that day. And it’s a privilege to hear other people’s thoughts and ideas and to share conversation about them. I think that experience keeps my own art practice grounded and keeps me thinking about it. It keeps it alive.

Q: artist Lesley Finlayson

If you could collaborate with any artist who would it be?
I would make a fantastic film with John Waters.

Q: artist & curator Alex Hetherington

I am very interested in a line that you draw between visual art and theatre specifically in the work you have done with Graham Eatough in the pieces ‘Killing Time‘ and the ‘Making of Us‘. Can you describe this process of making live work that has its roots in visual in the contexts of theatre and how will this subject impact on the work you will be making for Venice?
The things that I like about working in a collaborative aspect, not just with theatre directors but with Sally Beamish our composer or Adrian Sherwood our music producer is the fact that I don’t really know what the lines or the boundaries are. Maybe what it is is working between lines and boundaries of disciplines or things that are supposed to be disciplines to break that strict concept of disciplines. I think that’s what I like about it – I guess in essence I’m just doing what I want to do and not letting boundaries or disciplines be guides or hindrances for the way that it should work. I think it’s great and fine that people should go to an art gallery and hear music or see a bit of live acting.

I am also particularly interested in the poetic and the poetry that appear in your work often, roses, journeys, songs, that have a feminine quality. How do these work with or against the more masculine, tragic, abject or brutal passages?
When I was a war artist for Kosovo I came back with a few thoughts and one of the strongest was that women should rule the world.

For more information on Graham’s work, see his GENERATION exhibition review by Rachel Boyd on Central Station here.

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Serious Facilities, established in 1998 are a TV Post Production Facility based in FilmCity Glasgow. They on-set data managed, edited and worked on the final post on this series for Tiger Aspect and BBC Three.

How did you come up with the colour palette for the series?
We were given a few references, it was to be as cinematic as possible, the exec loved the look of Utopia so we tried to give it a strong and defined look and feel.

What did you enjoy most about working on the zombie series?
It was a hugely ambitious and challenging show. They had cameras running 24hrs a day and the sheer volume of footage required a very rigid and well thought out management plan. The editing process worked really well as we utilised our new Interplay system, this allowed edit producers access to stream all rushes from our server via an internet browser both when in the facility and externally as well as all the loggers and execs. What was really great was to see a show like this being made in Scotland and for a very large group of talented individuals join to form an amazing team and produce something really quite epic.

What are you working on now?
We are in post with Iain Banks’s Stonemouth for BBC Scotland and Slate Films.

Content Design and development studio, ISO create digital media, interactive software and immersive installations. They are responsible for the show’s opening title sequence and in-programme graphics.

The titles use a wide variety of techniques, how did the design evolve.
The zombie genre is a well trodden path with multiple films, TV series, books, comics and games out there. We looked at a broad cross section identifying five or six approaches or themes from the different genres, things like infection, backstory, survival techniques or game graphics. For the pitch, we worked up three or four thematic ideas into sequences. The treatments covered a wide rage of visual techniques from animation, live action, graphics and CGI. Tiger and the BBC wanted to explore a couple of the approaches we suggested and they liked the idea of wrapping the titles and the backstory into one sequence in keeping with classic films of this genre. So the final title design was a combination of treatments mixed with specially shot BBC news room footage, animated newspaper headlines, old news archive, fake science experts and social media streams.

Can you tell us a bit more about the ‘ZombieVision’ you created?
Tiger Aspect commissioned a writer to come up with a backstory to the zombie outbreak; everything from how the infection started, to the gestation period of a zombie and how the pandemic infected the nation. This was used as the bible for the directors and producers when making the programme. We built up our ‘ZombieVision’ from elements within the backstory. The infection or mutation was unique for the zombie genre as it was caused by a digital signal rather than biological infection. We represented this by filming the zombies using the RGB+D depth kit which combines a 5D SLR camera calibrated with an infrared sensor form a kinect games console. When combined, it maps the moving image into the depth data from the kinect sensor and the results look like a mutated video signal. In the final composite the data was combined with various other effects in After Effects.

The tongue-in-cheek ’public service broadcasts’ contrast well with the 3D kinect images. Can you tell us a bit more about them?
As well as supplying titles and in-programme graphics, we were also commissioned to make twelve one to two minute stand alone films. These were made to look and feel like public service information films, with a dash of added humour. Stylistically we wanted them to feel quite simple and functional, a bit of an antidote to the polished digital look of the titles. The final films were a combination of green screen filmed zombies and animated illustrations.

Can you tell us about what you’re working on now?
We’re just finishing some animated period reconstructions for a prison museum in Lincoln, as well as a series of short films for Ikea.

Savalas is Scotland’s largest audio post-production facility, with the UK’s first Dolby Premier mix theatre. They created the chilling sound design for the show.

Did you listen to anything in particular for inspiration or reference as a starting point before creating the sound design and effects?
Zombies have been popular in film and TV recently so there has been a wealth of styles to listen to and take inspiration from. The Walking Dead has been our main reference point in terms of recording the zombie vocal performance; creating that guttural, back of the throat sound that’s deeply disturbing but is still identifiable as human.

Video games such as The Last of Us and Dead Space have made particularly good use of vocal processing effects and they’re steeped in gory detail. These references have been good to listen to when the show calls for something a little more twisted.

What kind of instruments,electronics and/or objects did you use?
Before the show was filmed we took a trip to the set and recorded a lot of effects such as chains, scrapes and fence rattling. This also allowed us to record some zombie vocals within the spaces which we could add in later to build up the zombie horde.

We captured the reverbs of the spaces using an impulse response technique. This involves setting up a microphone and speaker in each location, then playing a long sweeping tone through the speaker that we record in the space. A computer program then decodes the data from that recording when we return to the studio. The captured reverb can then be used to make the zombies we add in sound like they’re in that room or in the distant streets.

For the titles and graphics in the show we used digital instruments such as Native Instruments’ Reaktor and Absynth. These allowed for the creation of interesting whooshes and electronic effects. The public service announcements throughout the show all have elements digitally created through the use of these instruments.

The sounds can become pretty dramatic at times. How do you balance these out, keeping the individual tracks audible?
The zombie groups can become chaotic and while we wanted them to feel overwhelming, the key is to spotlight each individual zombie closeup to make them feel threatening. To achieve this we created zombie crowd sounds which work as a background effect. From there we can focus in on the close up zombies and add more expressive detail to their attacks and groans.

The show is mixed to the R128 loudness standard which means that we can allow the big moments to jump out at the viewer. Use of dynamic range is particularly important in horror; it allows suspense building through the quiet scenes and makes the big events more impactful.

Read more about Central Station’s collaboration with Savalas and artist Roderick Buchanan here. Alternatively, find out more about ISO’s Commonwealth Games work on Central Station here.

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Can you tell us a bit about your background – how did you first get into photography?
It is a bit of a serendipitous story. My roommate Mike Dewey got me this vintage Minolta film camera for my birthday about 2 years ago and as soon as I held it in my hand I was hooked. There was something about the analog process that made me fall in love with capturing a moment. Ever since then I have had some sort of camera slung around my shoulder whenever I step out the door in the morning.

How would you describe your process?
As someone who is self-taught, I find the best form of education is to take every shot you would regret not taking. It is pretty simple but so far it has not steered me wrong. When I get stuck or am not sure what to do, the best way for me to break through is take a bunch of bad photos and figure out how they could be improved. Once I have done my selects I typically pull the image first into Lightroom for things like color correction and then onto Photoshop for detailed adjustments.

Film photography or digital?
I enjoy aspects of both but I have switched to digital for the most part for logistical reasons. I will never stop shooting film though. Every picture has this extra splash of color that adds to a shot’s character.

We love that you give away outstanding images for free every week, but why do you do it?
This project all stemmed from the idea that if I started to become a shutter junkie, pictures would just waste away on a hard drive. I felt that was unfair to the energy I put into each one. I am in awe day in and day out by people’s creativity and, through my web design career, owe a lot of my value to others who have taken the time to explain their process for the sake of contributing to a wonderful community. This is my response to their selflessness.

You have traveled the globe and captured some stunning images. Where would you return to?
That is a loaded question because I would probably go back everywhere if I had the opportunity. My favorite country recently was Iceland because of the culture and the out of this world landscapes.

What photographers do you find most inspiring?
I have the pleasure of being friends with some insane natural talent who continually set a really high bar. I look up to Bret Lemke and Taylor McCutchan for composition and color. Mike Dewey has a masterful eye for color, which I am perpetually jealous of, and look to everything he does as a challenge to catch up. I have also amassed quite a collection of inspiration on Instagram from people like Noah Sahady, Alex Strohl, Matt Bauer, Humza Deas, Jimmy Marble, Daniel Zvereff and Porter Counts, to name a few that I am constantly humbled by.

Tell us a bit about your day job.
By day I design websites for Thrive Consulting Group. I spend a lot of time in Illustrator trying to figure out how to make a user experience tell a story and a brand. The beauty of my job is no two things I create are solved the same way. Always being challenged in some fashion keeps things fresh and exciting.

What one piece of advice would you give to an aspiring photographer?
Do not get discouraged by details or complexity when you first start out. At the end of the day taking the shot whether it be good or bad is progress. You can learn equally as much if not more from a photo that is not your best by looking at how you did it and thinking through how you will do it differently the next time around. Trying to figure out all the variables can stifle action. Go shoot! Something you get will be great and it only gets easier over time.

See Jay’s growing collection of freely downloadable images here.

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With the largest screen in Europe, what sort of challenges did you face?

DS: Filling it for over two hours! It’s an enormous image area that is ultra high-resolution. It’s 5000 pixels wide and it’s a really unusual format. It’s like designing for 5 cinema screens in width.

Can you tell us about how the show was built?

MB: We designed twenty sequences with a mixture of purely linear sections and others composited within the playback system. The time lapse photography was quite an interesting challenge. It had to be created from a single frame meaning that the aspect ratio had to be altered for the thinner screen.

Some of it was supplied as a kit of parts so we would create animations and then break them down into their component parts and send them over as individual elements. It’s interesting because you don’t realise how some of it is going to work in situ. We created content with a lot of flexibility so we could re-jig it in situ.

CL: Ultimately, the kit of parts were then broken into hundreds of numbered tiles which were sent to the screens. We only saw them on screen two weeks before it went live.

DS: You can never visualise how it’s going to look on that scale. We see it with some of our video installation work. What looks great on screen, when seen in a room or immersive environment, changes your perspective on the media completely. You often have to slow things down because people get motion sickness. It’s taking that to an exponential degree in this case!

How did you go about translating concepts like “People Make Glasgow” and “Freedom Come All Ye” into tangible designs?

MB: They can go through the traditional design process so for “Freedom Come All Ye,” you look at the lyrics as your starting point and look and explore some of the themes or words, like ‘wind’, ‘blossom’  being a carrier for the message. We developed a number of different approaches which in this case were amalgamated into the final sequence. While you’re developing the treatments you have to retain an overview of how it’ll work in the context of the overall performance.

DS: You might go through three design concepts before you nail something. It’s an interesting part of the design process, to see which ideas survive. With some concepts, it really is survival of the fittest.

CL: From there you do test animations to show them the concept and get it nailed down. Part of the experience is a good client. That’s an important part of the jigsaw. Working with the producers at Jack Morton was a pleasant surprise.

DS: They’ve been here in Glasgow for over a year. They’re an international group who travel from major opening to major opening. At their core, there was a British creative team. It’s been great to watch all the strands pull together on such a large scale.

Opening Ceremonies used to just be ‘Here’s the opening of the games, here’s the dry speeches, give the athletes a parade.’ Now post-London host cities seem to have to encapsulate how a nation sees itself and how it projects itself in the future. That’s a lot to ask of any entertainment.

With so many different design elements, how did you decide on using specific techniques like particle animation and time lapse?

MB: It’s part of the theme of welcoming the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth and showing Scotland as a location, but it’s also more of an ambient scene as opposed to a high entry part of the show. The show is very thematic with a lot of variety. There was a different approach to each chapter and the graphics had to reflect that. For example, we used particle based animation (code-generated graphics) in Freedom Come All Ye.

DS: There was a script for each sequence but it was left open ended as to how we would visualise that. In some instances, animation was better. In others, it was photography and film.

CL: Over the whole two hours, we featured different techniques and styles to keep the show fresh and interesting. It’s also very different from what we normally do. This was a live show that we were building rather than a film as part of an experience. The tone of each piece is important and how it lifts and contrasts with other parts.

DS: Unlike a lot of film work we do this project involved working in parallel with a number of different departments: choreography, live performance, pyrotechnics, lighting, TV directors, live OB. You have to work in a complementary way with all of them.

What other techniques did you explore in creating the visual graphics for the show?

DS: We used traditional 2D motion graphics and collaborated with quite a few people with a team of about fifteen. In house, it was a big team effort from our talented designers Chris Bain, Blair Harrower, Brendan Bennett, Tom Pollock, Ross Douglas, producer Jamie Gillespie and ourselves. We also had associates like Will Anderson working on the Nelson Mandela sequence which was traditional hand drawn animation. Mark Huskisson was responsible for the time-lapse photography. And a regular collaborator of ours, Danny Carr worked on motion graphics. We used 3-D graphics to explode Wellington’s cone in the opening sequence and there was also a 3-D space station. The Queen’s baton was also 3D animation and we had John Butler working on that.

MB:  Chris Bowman from XL media was housed in the studio a week before the gear went on-site, building and sequencing the show on the playback system. He worked closely with us on the technical issues and show build as well as creating flexible frameworks for queuing graphics and integrating areas of live feeds.

DS: Something of that scale is so environmental. The designers are living and breathing that but until you actually see it in a stadium surrounded by people with the sound and the music and the lights, it’s a different experience.

What were you most pleased with about the opening ceremony?

DS: As a TV experience, I liked the athletes parade. In many ways, it’s the driest section. It’s really only about information but it was dynamic and it seemed to whip along the crowd. The athletes came in and the place was washed with colour and movement. So in many ways, it’s the biggest and most functional section and is usually the most utilitarian moment of the opening; I think the designers really added some beauty and art to that.

London and Glasgow both have huge visual arts cultures. What keeps you in Glasgow?

CL: You don’t need to be in London to do this type of work though there seems to be the perception that you have to be. It’s great to do a project like this up here. We do work on this scale but never in Scotland, so it’s the first time we’ve done something like this here. It’s a great opportunity for us.

DS: We had to pitch against London companies for this job. It’s expected that you’re going to pitch against London agencies, but where you’re based doesn’t affect the work you do that drastically. In this case, it was to our advantage in that we had daily physical contact with the client. Generally we’re based here because as Clyde said, you don’t have to be in London. There’s a creative melting pot in Glasgow. In London people live and work in quite specific silos creatively, whereas in Glasgow there is much more of an overlap.

MB: It’s also a nightmare trying to get Tunnock’s teacakes in London.

What’s ISO’s next big project?

DS: We just finished 18 media installations for the new WWI galleries for the Imperial War Museum 4 days before the Games Opening so we are taking a short break! Our next big media installation projects are in Sweden and the Middle East.

Interview by Madeleine Schmoll.

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In advance of their show this month, Glasgow based sound/art/performance collective 85A talked to Central Station about Cargo, Camera…Action!…

In a video about Cargo, Camera…Action! Dom Hastings describes the art scene in Glasgow as “DIY & grassroots.” How would you describe it?

There isn’t so much commercial presentation in Glasgow. There’s only really two commercial galleries. I’m sure a lot of artists would like to have more opportunities in that way, but for us it becomes more of a breeding ground for different artists getting together to create different types of events, heavily inspired from the music and arts scenes mixing.

It’s a way of getting things done and learning from each other, even from other people’s mistakes. There’s such a huge arts community with loads of people doing things and that’s really inspiring. Even if you’re not necessarily part of it, you’re friends with everyone and there’s a supportive community in what you’re trying to do.

Cargo, Camera…Action – Photo: Eoin Carey

How did the collaboration with Glasgow Film come about?

The first collaboration was Jan Švankmajer for the Glasgow Film Festival in 2013 at the closing party. Glasgow Film approached us. That was the first official commission that we did. It was a matinee to an evening performance with ten mini-cinemas in it. We were screening Švankmajer’s early animations, his short films and made an immersive environment that people could walk around in. It was a mixture between more focused theatrical sit-down performances and then just stuff that you could stumble upon. Everything was bespoke to the film and we responded to his films to create a cinema environment.

The audience had to interact with the performance, for example if they wanted to watch this one film they had to be led around by a grim reaper with a chain. You had to go to a restaurant and book your table and when you got served there was a big slab of meat with a screen in it. It brought a new audience to Švankmajer as well as bringing out the older audience. Those films are nearly twenty-five years old so we were bringing the Surrealist out from under the rug and mixing the visual arts and film audiences.

From there, they approached us. We also had some ideas about doing something for the Commonwealth. The commission came about from that, from being on the scene and doing lots of film-based works. Their brief for the commission, was to transform underused locations along the River Clyde and make them into bespoke cinemas. That’s what we’ve done consistently; take over disused spaces and make them into cinemas.

85A & GFF present Jan-Svankmajer – Photo: Neil-Davison

So if you could use any disused space in the world what would it be?

Chernobyl? There’s a few spaces in Glasgow we’ve got our eye on discovering. We don’t necessarily go out looking for spaces. Usually, something finds us. Either we stumble across a space and we all respond to it or someone gives us a space. Things are corrupt, decayed, industrial. When we’ve been asked to do something, like recently with Dark Behaviour in the Arches in a nice space, the first thing we do is go ‘where’s the rubbish, where’s the stuff?’ We make a space look messy. There’s not really any shortage of places like this. We’re quite easy on the requirements and pre-requisites.

Last year, we made ourselves a community interest company. That means we’re able to go to businesses and parks and ask for disused warehouses and are able to get rates relief. It’s a good deal because there’s an exchange which isn’t monetary. The more people that go in there, the more it keeps the place alive a little bit instead of this massive space sitting empty. That’s Glasgow, isn’t it? You just get given spaces if you start looking! We’ve never paid for a space ever and that’s been ten years of working in buildings.

How do you go about creating a performance? What’s your creative process like?

Torturous! We have brainstorming meetings and drawing sessions at the very start. It’s all heads together and then we maybe naturally split off and develop things and bring them back to the group constantly. Because we are unfunded and most of our work is commission based, we have to apply to make work. So we have to devise an answer to a brief and come up with something before it gets made and get the concept sketch. It’s accepted, if you’re lucky and then we decide to do something totally different!

It would be pure luxury to have paid rehearsal times throughout the year for different things, but it just doesn’t work like that. It comes together in a more organic way of whoever is working with whoever and creating something. Life is the stage. We get paid from our other jobs.

A lot of things start as casual conversations between a couple of people and then it’s just like ‘ that’s an amazing idea!’ and you get a call ‘ alright, we’re going to do it like this!’ It has been a real treat over the last few months, we’ve got a studio, an HQ with a rehearsal space and a warehouse. It’s where we will build our stage; a full-scale 20 metre deep, 20 metre wide stage. We can practice all the kinetic elements on set and with all the props. With the show, we’re effectively performing it five times in one day and we’ve got different music acts for each one. There will be a tempo change within that so we’re going to bring the musicians in to do rehearsals.

With such large performance elements, how do you go about rehearsing?

In Glasgow we’re blessed with big living rooms and big bedrooms. So we work like this or we work on site when we’ve built the show. On one occasion we had the workspace in The Glue Factory one week prior to the show. Right towards the end you can find a space somewhere.

Cargo, Camera…Action – Photo: Eoin Carey

What should audiences expect from Cargo, Camera…Action?

They’re totally vital to the performance. If they don’t show up, the film is not going to be complete! We’re filming the last scenes of a film that we’re making and they’re the extras of the film. They’ll have some quite important jobs to do in making the film resonate and come to life. They should expect lots of music.

It’s a promenade experience with a café and the backstage crew bar, but really since the audience are the extras, it’s for them. It’s an all day wrap party. There’s talent scouts and mobile make-up station to prepare our extras. Then they’ll come for the shoot and they’ll have to do what the director says.

We stumbled across an article in the Scotsman back in February with the title ‘Cannibal Rats in Ghost Ship head to Scotland.’ This is the film that we’re shooting the final scenes of. We’re making a big cargo set. We’ve got cannibal rats.

85A & Glasgow Film Cargo, Camera, Action! Launch Event.

Durational performances are quite long, what are some of the challenges you face when performing?

Not enough hours in the day and not enough energy drinks to go around. It’s like giving birth, really tough at the time but afterwards you forget how hard it was and you look at what you’ve created. That’s what theatre and live performances are. It’s the adrenaline people feed off. A lot of it is down to the people that come to work with us as well. It’s not for the faint-hearted!

The real challenge is making a living in between shows. Once we get to the point where there’s a week until the show, we’re in familiar territory. With a long lead-in like this one has, it’s making sure that you can be available to do the work and the devising can be tough as well. As we’re getting more established and recognised, there’s an expectation that we need to come up with another good show. Then there’s pressure and the dynamics of a big group. It’s the big family syndrome of all of us trying to get along with each other and be fulfilled creatively. As you grow or become more recognised, there are challenges that come with that; making new work together whilst maintaining an income.

Cargo, Camera…Action! is our biggest show to date in a lot of different ways. We like to make it so that each person who comes to our shows has a good seat. When you go to these big events and there’s an aerial performer 200 feet away from you and this massive crowd, you feel like nobody. That’s why we’re doing the same show five times instead of doing it just once because then everybody is going to get a good seat.

We’ve taken down the amphitheatre’s capacity quite considerably to make it more intimate. This has always been so important throughout the history of all of our work. Our cast for this show is up to thirty. So it’s thirty to three hundred. We think that’s a good ratio. People call us mad for this, saying that it won’t last, that it isn’t sustainable. We think that’s what makes this special.

See 85A in Cargo, Camera…Action! on 26 July at the Clyde Amphitheatre. The event is free but some parts of the events are ticketed. For more information see the Glasgow Film website.  For more Cargo, Camera…Action! see our featured event. Want more 85A? Read our first Q&A with them here.

Photos courtesy of 85A and Glasgow Film. Interview by Madeleine Schmoll.

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Jenny Judova is founder of Art Map London, an art event listings website for the capital that is here to revolutionise the London art scene. What started as a small venture in late 2013 has now been outstripped by demand. Judova decided to launch a Kickstarter to fund a newly developed website. Fully-funded and a staff-pick after only a week on Kickstarter, it’s clear there is a need to make private views and events more accessible. Here, she takes some time to talk to us about Art Map London…

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

I am an alumna of Glasgow University, I did both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees there. The undergraduate degree was a joint honours in History of Art and Theology and Religious studies, and the postgraduate degree was a 12 month research into the representation of the Devil in the Queen Mary psalter, an early 14th century English manuscript. So something centuries away from contemporary art, but I think my affection for monsters and imps does shine through.

Founder Jenny Judova with ’Astro Monkey’ by Adam Slatter. Acrylic on canvas.

What is Art Map London?

Art Map London is an art event listings website for London. We list everything from private views to screenings to talks as long as they are open to the general public, and it is events based, so we do not list exhibitions. In other words, if you are searching for art and a free drink, Art Map London will tell you where to find them.

How did you come up with the idea for the project?

It was Glasgow inspired. Glasgow has a very strong private view culture, if you are studying art (especially if you are at GSA) you go to art openings. Third year private views just became my monthly routine and when I moved to London I spent weeks trying to find a private view listing website, or zine, or blog or whatever, but there was nothing. There are loads of maps that would show the locations of galleries and there are tons of generic exhibition listing websites. So after a month of not going to art events, I realised that if I want to keep my habits I have to create a listing website – and I did.

Currently, you’re looking to expand the website with a photo diary and a gallery directory. What is your long-term vision for the site?

I do see Art Map becoming the one-stop shop for all art events in London, and all gallery information. The long term vision is to use Art Map to demystify galleries and private views – to empower people who ‘don’t know anything about art’ to go to galleries and to be confident to look at art, judge it, and collect it.

What makes the London art scene stand out from other cities?

Diversity. Glasgow is new and experimental; New York is trendy and cool and polished, Paris is old fashioned and institutional, London is diverse. In London, you can find anything from the outrageously experimental exhibitions to the stick up your arse polite ones. You have galleries and curators who are all about research, and those who are all about slamming art on the wall and making money. In London, you can find something for any taste and any pocket.

Do you think there are any misconceptions about the accessibility of private views and gallery openings?

Yes, and that is one of the reasons why I started Art Map – to fight against those ridiculous assumptions and to empower people to judge art, because even if you do not have an arts degree, you are still entitled to have an opinion on whether you like the art work or you don’t. There are a number of ridiculous misconceptions, the two most widespread are: that you have to be invited or on ‘the guest list’ to come to a private view, which is rarely the case. And the second is that you will be questioned about art – which never happens, if anything a private view is the place where art is used as a conversation starter rather than the subject.

Monster Private View – Lara Thomson

You’ve teamed up with several artists to provide art rewards to your backers, can you tell us more about how you came to work with them and how you settled on the theme of ‘monster’?

From the start I wanted to work with artists, Art Map is about exploring the London art scene, especially the emerging art scene. So it made perfect sense to approach artists to have their work as awards rather than generic merchandise with the Art Map logo. I never really picked a theme for the Kickstarter I just wanted to work with artists whose art I admired, and whose work I would want to collect. That is actually how I met Cassandra Yap – I bought one of her prints. I came across Benjamin Bridges and Guy Haddon Grant when procrastinating online. Ben introduced me to Lara Thomson, and I fell in love with her monsters. I met Garry Russell in a bizarre way – a friend bumped into him in Selfridges – and the rest is history, and Adam Slatter was introduced to me by Garry.

I was very fortunate that all the artists agreed to take part in my campaign and gave me their existing works. Everyone apart from Lara, she created the Monster Private View print for the Kickstarter campaign. The Monster Private View is a detailed study of characters you meet at art events, and I like to think that the little guy with the map is me. The print is available for 50, and a limited number of prints will be available for only 25 via the Kickstarter. I believe that a collection speaks a lot about the collector, so in the case of the Kickstarter; the theme monster was not chosen I just happen to like monsters.

Kickstarter artists clockwise from the top: Adam Slatter, Guy Haddon Grant, Gary Russell, Lara Thomson and Art Map London founder, Jenny Judova.

Why did you choose to use crowd funding for this project?

Art Map is for everyone, not just for specialist public, and it made sense to crowd fund the project to check if the public actually wanted and needed it. Out of all the confounding platforms, I chose Kickstarter because I am most familiar with it – I’ve used it for a few years now.

What place do you think crowd funding has in the art world?

Unfortunately very little.

I find it a bit tragic that Kickstarter actually started out with an ambition to help artists and culture projects, but now it is best known for tech projects. Tech and digital campaigns are also more successful in gaining funding than art projects. Usually because they are better at researching how to create a successful campaign, and they are better at promoting it. One of the things that the panel discussion ‘Art projects on Kickstarter’, which I held, brought to light is that promotion is often key to success and should become a full time job if you want to get the funds. And now speaking from experience, I can confirm that it is true. The hardest work begins the second you launch your Kickstarter – I spent the last week chained to the computer and that is why Art Map is 92% funded in a week!

Art Map London Kickstarter Video

What advice would you give to young creatives and artists who are thinking of organising a crowd funding campaign?

Research. Research the platform, talk to people who went through it, do not jump into it, leave at least a month for preparation. I’ve seen great projects fail just because their founders did not bother to spend time on preparation and research and expected the Kickstarter community to throw money at them. And I’ve seen the most idiotic ideas funded because their project leaders were smart with awards and pledges, took full advantage of the video, and were good at promoting the campaign.

Crowdfunding is great, but it is definitely not a lazy man’s/woman’s alternative to government funding.

Art Map London is live on Kickstarter until 3 July. Having reached its funding goal, the project will continue to collect funds until its closing date. See how the campaign is doing here. Learn more about the artists involved in the special exhibition catalogue below:

Read more about the artists whose work is featured in the Art Map London Kickstarter campaign.

Photos courtesy of Jenny Judova. Q&A by Madeleine Schmoll.

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Few artists sum up the relentlessly adventurous spirit of Counterflows better than Maya Dunietz. Still in her early 30s, the Tel Aviv-based artist has earned a reputation as a committed experimentalist. While her background is in classical and jazz piano, Dunietz has cast her net widely to take in composition and improvisation, avant-rock, folk, electronic music, performance, theatre and sound installations. She’s performed with leftfield icons such as John Zorn, Mike Patton and Evan Parker, composed for Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram’s Hyperion Ensemble, and is currently working on a piece for a 600-strong female choir.

Her first solo album, which encompasses vocal pieces, ‘broken down piano’ and computer processing, is due in the coming month, while a recording of her free jazz trio with bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble is immanent (this crack London rhythm section are also making a Counterflows appearance, performing with saxophonist Joe McPhee).

Dunietz has performed in Scotland a number of times and in August, will perform in Glasgow’s Old Hairdresser’s with her partner Ilan Volkov (principal guest conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and curator of the international Tectonics festival) as Lover’s Ritual.

At Counterflows, she will be performing two sets: a duo with the remarkable Parisian artist Ghedalia Tazartes, and a recital of the piano music of Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, a 90 year old nun now living in Jerusalem.

How did you first come across the work of  Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou?
Nine years ago my partner, Ilan Volkov, brought home the record of Emahoy’s music (the album by Ethiopiques). We were immediately enchanted by her tender sounds, by this strange piano music that is unlike anything else we had heard and in the same time corresponding with so many things. We read her amazing life story in the liner notes and discovered that she had moved to live in the Ethiopian monastery in Jerusalem in the 80′s. We decided to go and find her. We knocked on her door in the monastery one morning, while she was sitting by the piano composing, as she did every morning between 9 and 1. We formed a special bond from the start, and a friendship grew between us three. We lost touch for a few years, and then six years later Emahoy called me, she was 88 at the time, and asked that Ilan and I come to see her, and help her out with a big project – printing her music in a book so that people around the world can play it.

She’s a fascinating artist. What attracted you to her music?
She’s indeed a fascinating artist. She has such flair and tenderness in her music and is so dedicated to her art. First thing I heard when listening to her recording, is the amazing touch she has on the piano. She is truly a gifted pianist and performer. Her sound is one of a kind , an ‘old school’, beautiful delicate sound. I’ve heard very few pianists play with such a great sound. There’s a very special sense of time in her music; even though she is writing waltzes or sonatas, the ‘accent’ of the music is Ethiopian, the time is constantly stretched and bent, subjective to the present moment, and the melodic lines have these spices that don’t exist in any classical piano repertoire. Something in the phrase goes another way.

Which of her pieces or recordings would you recommend to new listeners?
Well, of course there is the number one hit – ‘Homeless Wonderer’. That would be the first track. Then- ‘Golgotha’, ‘The Gardens of Gethsemane’, ‘Presentiment’, ‘A Mad Man’s Laughter’. You can find them in the Ethiopiques 21 album of Emahoy playing her own compositions, or in a vinyl released by Mississippi Records. And also you can find the notes to 12 of her pieces in the book that we made in 2013, published by the Jerusalem Season of Culture.

Compiling her scores must have been quite a task.
When Emahoy called me and asked us to come over and help, we did not expect this scenario: We came to the monastery, and Emahoy, 88 at the time, handed  me 3 old ragged plastic bags of ‘Air Ethiopia’, containing hundreds of pages of music that she wrote in the past 80 years. The manuscripts from her whole life, including her first ever music book from when she was 6 years old. The scores were in a big mess- a first page of one piece in one bag, the second in the other, the third lost, nothing was in order and the first thing we had to do is try to dig up the papers of each piece according to the scale, melody, and sometimes a date indicated on the page. Also, the manuscripts were written as sketches she wrote to herself, like little memory notes, and not in a clear way so that one can site-read it on the piano. So we had to translate this personal notation system she wrote for herself into a more accurate coherent score that can be understood by anyone. The task of deciding how to refer to time and beat in the scores, was especially challenging, as her playing is not bound to the usual bar division – It’s never simply a 3/4 waltz.

What inspired you to perform these yourself?
I love Emahoy’s music and feel a strong connection to her music and her life story. And being a pianist myself, it was the most natural thing for me.

Do you remain faithful to the scores or do you put your own spin on them?
As I mentioned above, she wrote her music in an unclear way so when we published her book quite a lot of editorial work had to be done. When I play her music I try to follow the structure and the way she plays it, but of course in my own sound.

Last year you performed three concerts of Guèbrou’s music in Jerusalem. How has she responded to the new found attention?
I think it was quite overwhelming for Emahoy to suddenly be surrounded by so many people and so much interest.  She enjoyed the shows immensely and came to all three. she was very touched to hear the music played by different musicians, and given the amazing response she received from so many people, I think it was an important event for her.

It was the first time that these two parts of her life- the church and the music – fell into each other’s arms. The community of her church, where she lived for more than 30 years, came to the concerts and listened to her music, they saw the incredible power and beauty of her art and how it touched so many people.

At Counterflows you’ll also be performing with Ghedalia Tazartes. You recently produced a sound installation based on your performances together. What can we expect this time round?
I made the sound installation out of raw materials from our duo show and other materials that Ghedalia gave me for the installation, as well as recordings of Ghedalia that I made during our duo rehearsals. At Counterflows, Ghedalia and I will be performing our live show together, in which we are both singing and playing.

Are there any other artists you’re particularly looking forward to at Counterflows?
The whole line up looks amazing. I am truly intrigued by each and every performance in the program. I am particularly looking forward to Sarah Kenchington and Joe McPhee.

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Counterflows runs from 4-6 April at various venues throughout Glasgow. For more information see the Counterflows website.

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