work of
Reuben James Preston
online semester diary at
www.reubenjames.co.uk

Land of the Fathers DVD for projection with audio

This piece is a reworking of the previous projection version developed during Sept 2004. The piece was inspired by a trip to the Brecon Hills during the summer. The view across the hills and the endless advertising campaigns made me feel that the very hills of the Welsh soil were singing in national praise of all that has been and all that is to come. The colouration of the fields was based on the Welsh National Anthem ‘Land of Our Fathers’ and coloured according to a previously defined and used colour system. Here for the first time I have used a sound track to accompany the visual manifestation of the musical score.

Union Jack board painting

This piece started out as an exercise – an exercise in complexity and process. Here the piano score of the British National Anthem was used as the basis for the piece. The idea was about the way in which I have been questioning my ability to fell patriotic at a time in history when I find it progressively more difficult to feel proud of being British. The use of the colours from my previously defined system in order to represent the musical score in crotchet time beat measurement units was both to demonstrate visually the musical score and also to allude to the variety of persons within the British Isles during this time of considerable immigration. The colours reference new depths of culture which Britain may harness if we have the wisdom to draw upon the resources brought to our isles. Another over tone is a personal one and references the colours of the Gay Liberation movement which has utilised a bastardised rainbow as their symbolic flag after the rejection of the pink triangle in the ‘80s: every gay venue now adorns itself with such a flag. As an exercise it was about the planning and process of the construction of building up the units of colour. The digital mock-up was created using an image creation tool which I have developed for my particular colour-music system and allows quick block structured pieces to be manifest for further development.

Belonging DVD 1 for projection with audio track 4

Having begun the work on the previous piece I was becoming concerned about the form of the colour units I have been using. In considering the Union Jack I decided to experiment at using the form of the flag itself. Here the work references the colour manipulations of Wallinger in his inversion of the Union Jack colours. In this video piece the forms used at the distinct elements of the flag itself. During the progress of the video the elements are coloured according to a piano score of the National Anthem. The piece questions what a Union Jack for a changing Britain could/should look like to reflect the multi-cultural multi-lingual dimensions of society at this time.
The later mixes include sound tracks which reinforce the conflict of identity by use of audio mixes of The National Anthem, The Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen – and the European National Anthem – Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. These sound tracks intertwine and change their dominance throughout the piece suggesting an instability and fluctuation of security and identity.

Belonging DVD 2 for projection silent

In the development process of the previous work I was concerned about the question of how one might capture the essence of national identity. It felt in many ways as if one was trying to grab at fog. This video shows the video footage of the previous work projected into a room of smoke – disco smoke—referenceing again Felix Gonzalles-Torres use of night club props. The articulation of the image occurs only through the incidence of the light waves upon the particles of smoke in the air. Here the piece is saying something of how the National Identity exists in the people of the Nation and not in some notional Britishness which may be a mental fabrication of a Sir Humphrey Appleby character from the BBC situation Comedy of the 80s: Yes Minister and Yes Prime minister.

Misty union jack stills

The selection of stills is taken from an initial attempt to film the previous video piece. During this first period of work a water misting device was used together with a digital projector. The lighting levels of the projection proved very difficult to control in a stable enough way to allow for a satisfactory filming. Consequently the use of water vapour was abandoned and the use of night club smoke was pursued instead. However, these stills are included because of the aesthetic of fuzziness which ensued during that initial piece of work. There is an out of focus-ness which I find alluring especially where the colours intermingle at the edges of the forms.

Union Jacks on newsprint, Union Jacks on acetate

Following on from the stills of the video Belonging, these pieces explore the use of nationalistic, patriotic forms in and on the daily experience. The first piece was trying to utilise the ‘ordinary and everyday’ and relating the patriotic identity within the realm of the press who are trying to portray a vignette of our corporate social life. Here on the page displayed on the wall of my space the apposite stories of male sexual rejection and parental discipline are overlaid by enduring questioning images of what the national position might be on these subjects. The second piece on acetate is a serial collection of the stills from the video work and shows exhibits a divers collection of union jack forms in millidecimal form; again alluding to the question of what is our National identity at this period in history. This piece was part of a long discussion about the use of post-production manifestations in fine art. The discussions included using the piece in a large format in the public realm of the high street shop window.

Union Jack sticker

A final isolated frame provides the concluding image in this range of work concerning the union jack form. This time a single frame from the video work has been taken and turned into a sticker. Here the whole enormity of National Pride and Identity has been relegated to a decorative form on a sticker.

Union Jack writing paper and envelopes

The stills of the video were not dead yet when these next ideas were embarked upon after a long discussion about the graphic use of potentially emotionally powerful images. The whole set of video stills are here used and manipulated in a long and exhaustive process to generate a set of note paper. The fine art has been incorporated, or given life to and under girding the process of writing a letter. Is the letter to be written one from a British citizen? Will the paper give the letter added gravity? Will the letter be a record of some moment celebrating the wonder of being British or will it lament the loss of a passing ages or value held?

Visual tribute to James Tenney

During the process of researching the New Perspectives in Music movement at the Conservatoire I chanced upon a piece of music composed and dedicated to James Tenney a deceased member and contributor of the movement. I was intrigued by the composition because it consisted of growing and added chords all merging into each other over time. There was a beautiful mathematical precision about the piece as well as a lyrical quality added by the instruction ‘keep the sustain pedal down throughout’. Upon reading about the death of James Tenney and the composition dedicated to him I decided to work on a visual dedication to him based on this musical composition. It gave me a chance to think about form again. This time I was thinking about the form of the notes written in the score. I had been studying some of John Cage’s writing and pondering the way in which he had described music as a time measured period of noise. I wanted to capture something of this timeliness quality along with the clearly defining beat proportion and the effect my mind imagined avower the sustain pedal be held down throughout a performance of the piece.
In the creation of this visual form I use the space inscribed by the hand of the composer – the notes themselves to provide the form for my colour. As the progressive developmental documentation shows these note forms together with digital embellishments became the focus for the piece. In its final forms I find the quite visually exciting because it is both clearly structured and with the unpredictable interactions of note upon note. As I look at the piece I can feel the strike of the hammers upon the metal strings of the piano measuring the time passing by whilst the pitches intermingle. The image I find visual disturbing to view and strains my eyes as they quest to find a point to focus upon and cannot.

I am I am I am – Image with three states
To be viewed in daylight, at night in the dark from afar and also at night when approached to turn UV light on

After reading the book by Rowland Barthes ‘Incidents’ I found myself walking into my own private incident purely by chance.
“S/He was on the stage singing I am what I am…. and the crowd cheered. I needed a pee and the gents door had been vandalised. A hand drawn of a stick man was blue tacked to the door with arms up in the air – something was different the loos were a happy place. Another he, looked at me as I entered and caught my gaze and held it.”
As if by chance this image began to emerge into my mind during the days which followed. The loo sign was wrong – the standard sign has the man’s arms downward pointing. The place I had been was a gay bar with a stage show where someone was dressed as Shirley Bassey singing her age old gay themes. The crowds cheered as a moment of lightness entered the air and lovers, friends and fag hags stood in merriment. My weakening bladder called me to the gents where the door was barely hanging, with its paper label blue tacking it in place. The age old unspoken language of eye upon eye was coming into force. I stepped forward, his eye caught mine and held my gaze that moment too long.
In this piece I have captured an allusion to this incident. The image has three states. In daylight the ‘man’ stands there proud before you alluding to the joy of safety which gay men often (used to) feel in gay bars, where songs of the drag queen artiiiiiiists bring the house down for those of us of a certain age! The back ground is the score to that Shirley Bassey vintage performance and the stick man speaks volumes of the Gents a place of relief and intimacy – the overtones are clearly ones of the sexual encounters enjoyed by many men in the toilets within pubs, clubs and other places too. The second state of the image is in the dark when the stick man glows with the yellowy glow of phosphorescence, in the dark many gay men have come to life and a new dimension of existence – life glows. As one approaches the image in the dark the Ultra Violet light turns on and the stage comes to life as the white paper of the score shines like a stage alive with a performance.
The back ground for the experimentation in this piece came from looking at some of Angela Bullock’s works and the ways in which people’s presence in her environments change the pieces of work. I was looking at working on the participatory/interactive dimension of my work.

Project 99 piece

I have to admit that I was quite thrilled with this little piece which was sold as part of the Ikon Gallery offsite Project 99 experience in 2004. There are some photos on my desk which shows where the item was sold – from an ice-cream van.
This simple little globe like polyhedron proved to be a best seller. It was purchased as a net which then had to be constructed following the instructions which came with it. The finished piece could then be hung/suspended near a media device to be viewed at its best: although I know a few made their way onto Christmas trees.
The twelve sides to the object were all photographs of outer city shopping areas in contrast to where the piece was sold: Brindley Place, The Mail Box and Canon Hill Park Mac Centre. My aim was really to say that in this period of the year – the four weeks running up the Christmas when the project was running – we are impacting upon the lives of others across the globe, some of these impacts will be for good and some for the worse but our spending is affecting the lives and environments of others. The beautiful idea of viewing the piece near to a media device, such as a radio, TV, computer, Sky box……. Arose out of a discussion with Peter Lloyd-Lewis and read much of what Mahnke has to say about the way in which environments are lit affecting the reading we have on a specific area.
99 of these pieces were produced and the remaining few are currently on sale in the Ikon Gallery Shop.

Website piece
www.visitthischristmas.co.uk
Viewed from CDROM on the desk—PC based machine required

This seasonal piece was great fun and incorporated the efforts of about 15 people. My aim was to create a piece which had a time element to it and also a revisiting dimension. Quite often we go back and look again to remind ourselves what we saw, or to look again and discover something new. In this website the aim was simple to get an audience to visit the site on the 12 days on Christmas in 2004. If one visited the site outside these dates you saw nothing except a chastisery message telling you that you were caught cheating!
With much help from the musician John Stratton and the St Luke Chamber Choir and the engineer Martin Hope the piece was located in cyberspace at www.visitthischristmas.co.uk A CDROM on my desk can be found which is a permanent record of the site. During the real twelve days of Christmas when you logged onto the site you were automatically taken to the appropriate day’s rendition of the song: on the CDROM you are allowed to select which day you want to view.
From a philosophical point of view I was here interested in temporality, viewer investment of effort, and issues of authorship when work is put in the arena of the internet.

Christmas Dodecahedrons
please turn them on to view/experience

My final piece of displayed work is the string of colourful polyhedrons. This piece arose from the Project 99 thinking and was based upon a proposal which was rejected because it was Christmassy. The work is investigating dimensions of interaction and intrigue as well as being based upon something of an aural aesthetic of the retro combined with a modernist formality.
Simply the faces are all well known festive songs shown by their melody lines in colour using my previously worked colour-music system. The polyhedral nets surround a set of old battery operated electronic bells each containing a speaker and playing brief vignettes of seasonal songs which correspond to those on the colourful 3D shapes surrounding them. As you view the piece the mind is drawn into the action of the sound moving before ones eyes and you will probably find you head moving to follow the sound as it fluctuates in volume and timbre. I love this terribly irritating piece of work because it managed to capture for me something of a dimension of Cartesian thinking in a simple construction. I found myself standing and looking and moving to ‘see’ where the sound was coming from – of course I couldn’t see where the sound was coming from but I became aware that I was allowing my eyes to try and sublimate my ears which are the primary organ of noise reception in our body. The piece manifests for me something of the problem of creating aural art in a world where art is marjoritively visual.

Supporting documentation on the desk and around the space

A data DVD of all my prep and experimental work is on my desk, together with copies of competition entries, research papers, comments, pointers and items of interest to me. Browse, read, look and enjoy! Or even write a note to someone using my note paper!
An online Diary for the Course is found at www.reubenjames.co.uk where images of the progress of the works can be viewed along with dairy entries throughout the last semester.