(performance interface, installation, live performance, cassette album)
Audio/visual installation and performance piece for projection, speakers, light sensing cameras and live data
“Hell Is Empty is an audio visual installation and performance piece that uses modern alchemical means to attempt to transmute the basest material possible into gold. Taking as its source the basest raw cultural material available – in this case the content, code and graphics of the lowest-common-denominator / alt-right spawning / ignorance-promoting / intolerance-supporting news website Breitbart.com – the piece uses all the constituent parts of the site to break it down into something more palatable. The php code of the site was scraped and converted into raw data to generate audio information; numbers from within the code were assigned to midi information to create musical patterns; articles from the site are read dispassionately before being broken down into something akin to glossolalia (speaking in tongues), which some consider to be the true treasure of the Templars, a true universal language; and finally, the visual imagery of the site is broken down during browsing using an algorithm taking data from the code of the site itself. During the performance, data is taken live from the site itself and manipulated in real time, whilst light sensitive cameras use the light and motion of the degenerating video – and the participants and audience’s own movements – to control and generate further audio.”
- Released on tape for the VIS label, March 2018
- Original commission for FIBER festival, Amsterdam, May 2017
Performance at Club Shelter 13/05/17
- Installation as part of TongueFest group show, Laurieston Arches, Glasgow 13/09/17-17/09/17, with live performances accompanying the installation
- Installation as part of Broken20 @ The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow 30/11/18
- Installation / performance as part of UNFIX 2019, CCA, Glasgow 29/03/19
Review: The Skinny: Unfix 2019
- Interview with The Quietus about Hell Is Empty: TVO shares Breitbart Installation