A real and imaginary alternative
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| Photo by Ben Williams |
Science helps us understand reality. It is thanks to it that one understands that the flash of lightning reaches us before its thunder. Light is faster than sound. Art also helps us understand reality but also allows us to locate ourselves on unreal grounds. The artist Vicky Clarke navigates with her sound and sculptural creations through scientific seas and artistic galaxies.
Vicky Clarke is a sound artist and producer from Manchester, based at Rogue Studios. Working with sound sculpture, field recordings and DIY (do it yourself) electronics to create objects, performances, installations and self-built instruments. Recently she performed in the MUTEK Barcelona 11th Edition as part of the #WeAreEquals Music Academy closing party due to her participation as a mentor in #WeAreEquals, the British Council's platform for gender equality and diversity in the music industry.
One of the several projects in which she is envolved is the Noise Orchestra which she codirects along with artist David Birchall, a DIY electronics project building Noise Machines that translate light into sound.
What does art mean to you?
Vicky Clarke is a sound artist and producer from Manchester, based at Rogue Studios. Working with sound sculpture, field recordings and DIY (do it yourself) electronics to create objects, performances, installations and self-built instruments. Recently she performed in the MUTEK Barcelona 11th Edition as part of the #WeAreEquals Music Academy closing party due to her participation as a mentor in #WeAreEquals, the British Council's platform for gender equality and diversity in the music industry.
One of the several projects in which she is envolved is the Noise Orchestra which she codirects along with artist David Birchall, a DIY electronics project building Noise Machines that translate light into sound.
What does art mean to you?
Art is an extension of the self, an articulation of how we relate to and state our place, politics and experiences within the world. Art is power, beauty, voice and hope. Art is a real and imaginary alternative.
Sound artist, sculptor , probably we could define you as an sculptor of the sound. What does each of these artistic languages give you?
I like to think of sound as a material that has physical, resonant and imagined potential. Sound sculpture can be interpreted in numerous ways, from the form of the object itself, listening and sculpting of acoustic properties and also how these things exist and are experienced in space. I am influenced by musique concrete principles of sound fragments and Delia Derbyshire’s idea of ‘going into sound’. I like to consider the unseen forces and properties of a material and let this direct me rather than starting with compositional structure. Coming from an art studio practice I enjoy the physicality of working with materials whether this is wires and electronic components or pieces of steel. For me, experimenting with these physical aspects and sound objects is an extension of this. I work alot with contact microphones and close miccing techniques to uncover frequencies and fragments and explore these through amplification and processing.. I have two workspaces; one is an electronics and art based studio at Rogue Studios in Manchester where I can play with materials, test circuits and installation and performance ideas. Secondly I have a home studio for music production with synthesisers and instruments where I process and compose my live sets and recorded material. I find having these two interlinked spaces provide a good dynamic for my artistic process.
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| Metal sound sculpture © + courtesyVicky Clarke All rights reserved |
Obviously a link between both arts is in your case technology: machines, electronic devices... Why do you feel so attracted by machines and electronics?
My father was a computer programmer and growing up in the 80s there were always bits of computers lying around the house, I used to be fascinated by staring at the motherboards imagining little cities and networks so I think some of this daydreaming has occupied my imagination ever since and grown into a love of wires. I got into electronics quite a bit later but found a love for working within this medium of physical and sculptural conjuring, I find soldering quite meditative… even troubleshooting when things go wrong ! I enjoy that in electronics there is on one hand systems and logic and signal flow but on the other hand working with noise machines there are errors, unexpected outcomes and mess, that often sound horribly great.
There is something magical and illusory about electricity as an unseen force that characterises our lives but we take for granted. I often think of the wonder of the coming of electrification to cities and how revolutionary this power is, I like to think of electrons flowing as a creative force we manipulate, direct and exist with. In the present day, how we relate to our technologies and devices have become a physical extension of ourselves- a cybernetic reality where we don’t always feel in control of our technologies and the balance can become skewed, obsessional and potentially damaging. I’m fascinated by looking back to past technical objects and interfaces that may have been unrealised ideas waiting for tech advances to catch up with concepts, there is a mythology here around the dreaming up of machines and the inventor.
What about your self-built instruments? The existing ones are not enough?
I should admit that I am a bit of a gear junky so I have plenty of bits of tech and pro-equipment that I love but... there is something for me quite radical about inventing your own tools to create and work with. This can open up new aesthetics, sounds and workflows and provides a space for experimentation, error and accidents that are not pre-prescribed by a tech company or design flow. Designing an interface to be more gestural, tactile or bespoke to your physical needs makes total sense, and ethically it’s important to encourage an open source agenda and build knowledge acquisition and skill sharing. The DIY music technology scene across Europe is really vibrant and as a sector is one of the most dynamic embracing new ideas and technologies. Most of my learning has been through self initiated projects and international residencies that have brought me into contact with artists and technologists in soundart and electronic music and furthered my approach and understanding. For example I was on the CTM Music Makers Hacklab in Berlin a couple of years ago where the theme was emotional intelligence, creating a live show in one week with new artists and also time and space residencies such as at STEIM and QO2. Part of my research is to learn about the communities and cultures that exist around diy tech communities. Last year I was living in Berlin researching the live AV and diy synth scenes, I found a parallel with Manchester in that the grass roots ecosystem and artists in the electronic music and audio-visual scenes (such as Manchester’s Testcard community) are highly cross-collaborative and ideas move very quickly. Makerspace culture is also an important aspect, having access to prototyping tools and support at places like Pervasive Media Studios and Madlab have really helped me develop critically and practically as has working with long term collaborator Creative Technologist Chris Ball on a range of commissions.
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| Electromagnetic tape sculpture © + courtesyVicky Clarke All rights reserved |
You mention futurism as an influence. That movement was a bit radical in his social statements: "There is no beauty without struggle." How has this particular movement influenced you?
From the angle of our relationship to new technologies and embrace of new methods, I would however make a distinction that i’m more influenced by Russian than Italian futurists (ie. not by overtones of aggression and violent struggle!) but interested in this idea of an avant garde break from the past. Futurists embraced the coming of the machine, urbanism and the beauty of speed as a new form of art or aesthetics whereas at the same time some citizens feared this new wave of industry and an increasingly mechanised society. I love 1920s Russian futurism and constructivism in particular as a radical art movement that was cross disciplinary and the idea of projectionism - forging new methods rather than concrete objects with unknown outcomes. I’m interested in how technological advances through art and science are met by society and the attitudes and responses these elicit at specific times. There is a great book ‘The Age of Noise in Britain’ which talks about how the sound environment of the country changed with industrialisation and people were fearful for their health and spirituality to the extent where an Anti-Noise league was established.
One comment around the Futurists love of speed is that today in our ‘late capitalist’ period we are seeing the ecological results of this accelerationism (distinctly un-beautiful) in terms of technical consumer goods becoming faster, smaller and increasingly obsolete. In the age of the ‘upgrade’ it is important to think about our devices , choices and the sustainability of technical objects. It’s good to see the EU bringing in legislation prompted by the right to repair movement, and holding tech companies to account over their ethics around repairability, material sourcing and labour rights.
One of your more recent projects is “‘MATERIALITY’. What could you explain us about it?
MATERIALITY was a research project where I explored sound sculpture as a medium to interface the physical and digital in music making. I wanted to create a performance system that consisted of tactile acoustic material sculptures, DIY interfaces and traditional electronic music tools. I wanted to play with the usual forms of electronic music performance to see if the audience could move closer to the material through gesture and interaction with the sculpture or through the tangibility of the materials. I explored the resonant and conductive properties of material working with glass, steel and aluminium, creating test pieces at the London Sculpture Workshop, whilst learning to weld and work with metal work tools. I recorded the sounds of the process of the working with the material, these sounds of welding, grinding, sawing and hitting formed an industrial musique concrete sample library that I then used to make drum kits and loops for the live set.
As part of the project I worked with scientists at the National Graphene Centre to create a DIY interface for Ableton Live that worked via the conductive properties of Graphene. I premiered this piece at Music Tech Fest in Stockholm and the work was featured on Sound and Music’s Composer-Curator series in 2018. Coming from Manchester, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, there is a distinct heritage for science and technological discoveries. Most recently with the discovery of the ‘super material’ Graphene at the University of Manchester i’d been interested in this as a ‘futurist’ material . I found this interesting conceptually, as all of the news and hype around this new ‘wonder material’ was around a race to industry and capital applications, however I wanted to think about the material from a poetic or aesthetic sensibility as a medium to make art.
You are co-director of the Noise Orchestra. Could you define noise? And then, could you define music?
I guess this comes down to definitions, perspectives and taste, for me noise is non-organised sound, I also feel alert to noticing noises and textures in the environment that maybe aren’t as defined or obvious so I think noise can be about tuning in more than the often more negative connotation it can have as unwanted sound. The name of our project is inspired by the Russian noise orchestras of 1920s who were essentially foley artists for the new era of cinema. We run a lot of electronics workshops that are both practical building noise machine circuits where participants improvise with light and sound. We see noise as a democratic means to make sound, separate to classical or structural traditions and forms, anyone can participate to make noise so it’s inclusive, there are no barriers. I’m currently a little bit obsessed with radio frequency recordings, and some of these textures and techniques I’m using on new solo compositions.
What is the purpose of Noise Orchestra?
Noise Orchestra is a DIY sound art project led by myself and David Birchall. We started off as a DIY electronics project back in 2015 when I was researching Russian 20s artists, making paper sculptures and Dave had started building circuits, we started running workshops around these experiments combining turntables and noise. Our first commission was for our project ‘Play the Collections’ as Light Fantastic Artists in Residence at the National Science & Media Museum where we made graphical paper scores based on cinematographic objects in their collections, rotated them on turntables and amplified with light theremins in a live show. We got to travel to Moscow to research Thereminn’s noise machines and this all kick started our love for electronics. We are totally self taught, a big part of what we do involves people and passing on skills. We have an education strand where we run ‘Build a Noise Machine’ education sessions which are hands on technically and improvisational and have just released our first synth CACTUS Light-Noise machine (noiseorchestra.org). Our work is studio based developing instruments and gallery installation based or often soundwalks and environmental. Our last public artwork ‘SWARM:Play the Light of the City’ was commissioned as part of the ENLIGHT European Light Expression Network, where citizens are given portable noise machines to amplify the sound of the light in the urban environment as they walk around. I should clarify that Noise Orchestra is essentially two people, but it grows through multiple machines and players.
What are your future projects?
This year i’m concentrating on music. I’d like to release an EP and perform more. i’ve spent the last few years researching and building various machines, interfaces and sculptures and now i’d like to distill the ideas into some unified piece. I’ve just returned from St Petersburg as part of British Council’s UK-Russia Year of Music where I was researching machine learning and music, this is an area of great interest to me so i’m starting to explore some ideas within this framework. With Noise Orchestra we have a new installation we are developing at the moment exploring electromagnetism which we hope to tour in 2020/2021.
Could you explain to us a dream you had while sleeping?
When I was younger I had a recurring dream where I would experience different scenarios, some day to day scenes - some more surreal; where I would be watching the scene unfold behind a giant pane of glass, not being able to to communicate with the activity on the other side. I remember the frustration so clearly.
An interview by Juan Carlos Romero
Photoportrait of Vicky Clarke by Ben Williams
All artworks by Vicky Clarke
For further information please visit vickyclarke.org
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