Friday, November 03, 2006

/...re:capitulation/


The Nerve Metre (re) 0.0011 /… re:capitulation/
(Marker Scheme No: 375.007623).
Conical Inc, Melbourne Australia. October 2006.

(What we see here is an advertent attempt to make people oscillate with their own empiricity).
The Nerve Metre was conceived as an activation device, a mediatory mechanism for employment of the inherent sonorous and physical qualities of a given space; for the broadcast, recapitulation, and re-fabrication of our negotiation of an inhabited space. An apparatus producing a subliminal soundtrack composed from field recordings taken, exhumed, from within the exhibition environment in which the work will be situated. The Nerve Metre utilises manipulated short wave radio signals; inhabiting the live realm of the radio frequency, in combination with the manipulated pre-recordings, to perform a composition which becomes played out, amplified, through and by the very fabric or structure of the installation and its immediate surrounds. The installation process opens out to an enveloping matrix of connectivity between the notions of instrumentation, accumulative installation methodologies and applied drawing techniques. The Nerve Metre is an on-going project to produce a sound making/manipulating instrument, or device, for composing with the inherent sonorous/physical qualities existing within the space in which the work inhabits. There is an attempt for temporal transformation, a tuning into, and of, the inhabited space through the installed instrument, device; which never quite reveals its own mechanisms, or workings. These mechanisms, inhabit, and are fabricated into the re-fabricated aesthetic of the modular now, with its modern colour infused plasticity and insatiable synthesisation strategies. The second version, or materialization, of The Nerve Metre subscribes to a notion of the adaptability to the now as being relevant in this situation; where we see the shift, the slippage of a concept into a new spatial zone, and in turn a shifted conceptual relationship to the situation at hand, the space at hand. Becoming manifest within an environment that resonates with pre-existent histrionics’, this version of The Nerve Metre suggests a positioning for this installation as one that attempts to articulate, whilst concurrently activating, an inherent-ness pre-existent in the gallery environment. The re-fabrication of a pre-fabricated work, into the environment of Conical Gallery introduces an invigorating site of negotiation; and a repositioning through a methodology of re-applied re-fabrication. In a bid to avoid pre-disposure a desire to remain within the moment of a decision making process during the installation of this work will be initiated. This has been a prevailing mode within the Marker Scheme Series, of which The Nerve Metre is the latest incarnation. A delineation of the prescribed; or predetermined, is indomitably assigned to differing positions, or states of activation. The immediacy of the decision making process is engaged as an active mode in relationship to the designation, and delineation, of physical, prescribed, space by object and sound. The Nerve Metre situates, literally, its objects in positions to activate the inherent sonority of the gallery environment, and indeed through the materiality of the object itself; in combination with the inherent randomness of SW (short wave radio signals). Radio waves and the related positioning of distance to the state of now, the now, or prevailing situation at hand, becomes a malleable composition material. An active mode of re-composition through, and of, sound, object, and physical space. A transition of transmitted detritus into a sensory/spatial activation mechanism.TNM is now a series, a series within a series, a rhizomatic mapping technique of the observed contemporary realm. One particular interest is the relationship of human physicality to the prevailing technological mode, examined through an epistemology of sound and object making principles. In this situation to capture and amplify - be it in an altered fashion - the inherent sonorities of the space at hand, the gallery landscape, provides a zone in which to situate the act of looking, and the act of listening, and the potentially heightened physicality provided, in parallel to one another, to become the espial with a sound track, or micro-sound track. There is the objective to occupy, and invariably an occupiable objectified physicality. The Nerve Metre situates the infused colour of the plastic contemporary modular readymade into the position of instrument, mechanism; physically and conceptually. Artaud, Debord /and the derive/ give us the infusion of the self within the empiro-physico structures of now, and the re-mapping of an invented physicality as a process of sampling. The Nerve Metre series, can be seen to exist as an analogue technique of conceptual montage, in part inspired by these illustrious art heroes. The space between drawing and the derive come into question during this particular mode. A situation that allows for the acting out of the work and its relationship to the environment in which it is becoming manifest are necessary questionings within this version of The Nerve Metre. As with the re-application of an aesthetic we see to the re-application of a methodology, and indeed the activation of a mechanism designed to articulate space through the inherent sonorities/physicalities of that particular space, in the case of Conical, an already pre-articulated zone. There is an application of the pre-existent to a pre-existent, a re-manipulation installed into a re-manipulation, however what is created is not a doubling, it is an aperture for a view of the interstitialis of here and now. The interstitial can be used as the primary object of activation, however to activate or promote the interstitial to a position of immediacy shifts the material and conceptual relationship to a physicality in relationship to an ideology. To propel an intermediary realm into a position seen as foreground, rather than in-between, immediately unleashes mechanisms for re-fabrication. The notion that once the interstitial is highlighted it immediately shifts its context, becoming un-interstitialis, oscillates with the shifting fabric of existence becoming re-fabricated and highlighted through numerous expanding and deliberate re-fabricatory mechanisms. Existence and hence human physicality are being re-mapped, re-configured, and increasingly re-concontextualised. We are at risk of over fabricating at all moments of this invented process; should this be embraced, inacted into the mix? A pre-disposure to the object(s), and objectives of the installation in its first manifestation, a work that tailored a path, a linear incurrence into the realm where fabrication acts on several oscillatory realms, now attributes re-application as becoming the imperative, the objective, of the re-fabricative mechanism at play, the re-installation in avoidance of pre-disposition. What does re-presentation bring to this, exhibition, situation? What does it mean to re-inhabit a space, although a different physical space? The re-habitation is taking place through the act of installing of pre-fabricated objects, and objectives. This is a re-fabrication machine, that is its job. The re-contextualisation of everything that the machine can sublimate by the act of habituating. A calculated reinterpretation can be activated by the installation, and the very fabric of the gallery environment, its harmonious frequencies, whereby the negotiation on the part of both objects, and objectives begin to oscillate at both conflicting and harmonious frequencies. The Neural network supposes connectivity of the present contemporary technological manifest, that we invariably inhabit. It also suggest a continued slippage of the relationship to the moment. The inherentness of now. The very fabric of the now is the malleable material flux to which this installation process seeks to contort. What is the relationship of the static to the contorted, what if the static itself becomes the malleable material flux of the installation? There is a substance to every space which can be drawn to the surface by, and through, its inherent sonorities. This is an important part of the working contextualisation of The Nerve Metre as an installation, and an on-going process within the realm of contemporary art making methodologies. On reflection this is a core issue at question within The NM series. Inhabitation is another, and very important in relation the Conical show, which also asks how does inherent-ness manifests in the urban fabric of the contemporary city, the structure, at a macro and micro level. Drawing with, drawing from, drawing too, drawing forward, or more succinctly drawing out from the interstitial to the position of prominence. Does the intention to draw out the very fabric of that which is interstitial, reduce the validity, or potency, of that which it has been drawn out, or highlighted, propelled into the fore. Why it so potent at this point in history? Histrionic exhumation through inherent sonority.
David O’Donoghue, Sydney, March 2006.