I am interested in sound and video because of how we are active participants in its life. Sound is lonely, it reaches out for another so it can live. Without a receiver of the sound it will only continue to bounce from wall to wall, filling the room with an emptiness. There is an intimacy between the sound/voice and the viewer because of this entrance into their physical body. The work I create is concerned with breaking that immortality of sound and the role of the audience in that break; creating intimacy between audience and object.
The objects I create needs one to engage rather then the sound engaging them, a longing for that intimacy rather then forcing this intimacy. There is a double life to the work because the way an inanimate object is brought to life. When the viewer engages with the work the sound lives through them, given life by their listening. These audio recordings fill in and represent myself, they make me present in the room without my physical body.
The sound and the object that is animated cannot be separated. The object changes the sound, muffles it, and when the viewer interacts with the objects, the sound is changed again, becoming amplified and absorbed.
The majority of the sound work is recorded through analog technology. Analog has a different presence; you can physically hold the sound in your hand. Digital audio cannot be held in your hand and it only exists in the computer trapped in its perfection. When it is erased it as if it never existed, there is no proof of its life. When cassette tapes are erased there is evidence, visual and auditory, that a death has occurred.
I use my voice in the audio to fill in for myself. I fear miscommunication and fear that I will be just like the sound, drifting in a room waiting for someone to listen. I fear that I will always fail to translate the true weight my past. This failure is what makes the work succeed; it needs to fail because the intimate relationship the work expects from the viewer needs to be fair. It allows an entrance, space for the viewer. If the trauma were to be fully communicated that potency would make the work like the sun, to bright to see, and forcing the viewer to look away.