Cause and effect
I’ve been commissioned by Andre de Jong at the artist-led space VINYL to produce a piece of work for this Autumn, the set-up being that I’ve been paired with artist Nita Newman and Andre’s leaving us to riff off each other and see what happens.
A while ago Nita and I went for a stroll around Digbeth looking for inspiration. We explored a few different spaces and ideas, but we kept coming back to the Duddeston viaduct: 355 yards of futile endeavour.
… originally built to connect the GWR‘s B&OJR line to the LNWR‘s Curzon Street station. As stated elsewhere, the GWR fell victim to the LNWR’s politicking which meant that whilst the LNWR stopped the GWR gaining access to their station, the LNWR still demanded the viaduct be built even though they knew it would never be used.warwickshirerailways.com
Nita’s developing a site specific audio composition (call for participants currently on her website at http://nitanewman.wordpress.com/news/), so I’m taking my cues as being the following:
- effort
- journeying
- separation
- railways and engineering
I have some proto ideas that I’m investigating for feasibility since they’ll involve some data-streaming from a moving bicycle.
In the meantime I’ve also been doing some exploring of old railway lines and cunning mechanisms.