Bewildermaze was a collaborative event that I managed as part of Loop.Coop to introduce a wide Brighton audience to the upcoming web experience. Curious minds of all ages came to bring crafted objects to life through touch and sound in this immersive multi-sensory maze hosted by Otherplace @ The Basement.
Having visited the Jawalakhel Handicraft centre, a Tibetan women’s refugee camp in Nepal, This performed installation problematizes the sensitive act of representing a culture that contrasts her own by enduring the same process of spinning wool. Having acquired raw sheep’s fleece from the South Downs, I have washed, combed, roved and hand spun 1 kilometre of the wool to produce the lengths into a vertical loom. I perform the on-going process at a traditional spinning wheel, accompanied by a sound recording from the original destination.
As visitors pass by, I tell them about how I experienced the women at the Refugee camp. I express how I was enchanted by the sounds and I had the desire to capture still and moving images and sounds. I go on to explain the shift hat I felt and how I began to rethink this desire to represent the women as an artist and as a privileged western woman.
When the sound recording plays, I retract from the conversation and I am focussing on the raw wool, demonstrating the processing and labour I have carried out in this attempt at artistic representation.
This installation was to be a site specific piece, fitting to the gallery context of the large group show. By building a wall seamlessly into the existing walkway, I was able to conceal “Whispering Windows” speakers into the doorframe and run wires through the wall’s cavity. This then transformed the Timber material of the doorway into a speaker itself. The material used in this installation was of great importance – the way that it altered the sound both going into and coming out of the controlled system. The Floor is made of 2mm sheet steel upon a steel rod lattice, the two layers connecting achieved the perfect depth of sound which really brings awareness to the real-time footstep. This resonance also provides a heavy vibration moving across the platform, picked up by the contact microphones attached to the underside.
Joining The Docks, Chatham Historic Dockyard.
Walking on steel, the sound resonates in a way that is with our ears for only a second or so. Recorded through contact microphones attached to the material, the action is preserved and contributes to the documentation of the ongoing presence of the space in which this action is repeated with each movement that my audience makes.
KATIE BRIGGS 