This blog was originally intended to be a post about sound, language, and identity,  but I am going to take a slight detour via Central Station – and something that struck me about the Dundee pop-up networking session last weekend….

I’d  just given a presentation in the  Pop-Up tour, showing a couple of Colliderscope‘s music videos, and a little introduction  to our work.. a great afternoon – lots of really vibrant, exciting work and interesting presentations.. then to the networking  and nibbles afterwards – great setting, lots of fascinating stuff on show, and people eager to mix and mingle and network… but what did strike me as something a little odd about the networking event in the  Hannah Maclure Centre was the lack of music, soundtrack, background ambience -  zilch… just a slightly awkward silence and polite mumbings until the room filled up a bit and people were more relaxed, and their individual conversations  not so starkly highlighted against the silence and white walls…

Which leads neatly onto the important relationship between space and sound, visual and aural, concrete and abstract – we need each other, music and vision!  Goethe said that architecture is frozen music…and sound, consisting of intangible vibrations,  needs the architecture of a  physical  resonating chamber before it can be heard.  The abstract  nature of music needs the concrete form of visual imagery to bring it down to earth, otherwise its just free floating in the ether…  Which is why, given the demise of the medium of album cover art , with the canvas of visual identity for a piece of music now reduced to the size of an iTunes thumbnail,  why audio-visual collaboration is such an exciting area to be working in…I remember the days when sitting on the floor listening to your favourite album and pouring over the artwork on the gatefold sleeve, was like a magic gateway into another mysterious world….flicking through postage stamp sized images on iTunes or Spotify doesnt really err, hit the spot…

After my presentation, I had quite a few people ask if I had any CD’s – “I would just love to listen to your music on my iPod while working away in my studio”  a comment which emphasised to me how art and music are so intertwined…. and so it still surprises me  when music is seemingly added as an after-thought, rather than being an integral part of the conceptualisation of an event.   When I suggested to the Censta organisers at the networking session  that maybe some sounds might be nice, we found out that there were no facilities rigged up… come on you art folk – we musos want to come to the party too!

In fact, our wee patent leather shoes and frilly frocks are being dusted off as we speak… we soooo cant wait, that we decided to throw one of our own… Colliderscope are putting in a proposal to the Central Station Members’ fund to produce a collaborative  audio-visual event with  films and music, audio-visual installations, music videos, VJ’s and live performances… so all you Central Stationers who would like to contribute to an event “celebrating the collaborative synergy of music and moving image” *get in touch with us! You heard it first here….Lots of love from Colliderscope. xx

https://vimeo.com/12707515

* this luscious phrase courtesy of Willie Richardson of iMan4D – thanks Willie!

Find out more about Colliderscope here.
See some of Colliderscope’s work on Vimeo.

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Mix-Blog: A bit like a mix-tape but with blogs instead. Read more from the series here.