An Audio Visual installation musing upon our physical and metaphysical interactions within Time and Space.

This work examines the way memories are used in a creative and re-generative way based upon the idea that they are continuously accessed and referenced whilst feeding into new ideas, on both a conscious and a sub-conscious level.

The audio and video material used here reflect upon the physiological and psychological nature of memory, its refinement and re-interpretation over time and the reorganizational properties of the media used to render those recorded memories.

Audio material is de-structured through time by undergoing radical reprocessing using the properties of the granular synthesis program Crusher x, in particular its ability to "morph" sounds over specified times. Also interesting within the context of this piece is the actual process of "granularization".

Sound can be fed into Crusher and sampled at its smallest component level i.e. grains. These can then be rearranged from their original component order; in effect rearranged in time.

Visual material is looped, manipulated and re-structured in a similar fashion to the audio sources. The projected images are further re-organized in space by using mirrors to break up the projection surface and reflect the images onto different planes.

By taking sound samples (in this case recorded loop components of an existing composition by the artist) this piece, on one level, works as a multi-variable re-mix tool.

For the purposes of this installation the audio material will be pre-rendered
in the artists studio using two instances of Crusher x loaded with samples taken from a current work in progress going under the working title "20 Jazz greats".

Two instances of Crusher are used to re-enforce the idea of continuous cyclical development.

In practical terms one instance of Crusher employs a pc with multiple outputs routed into an analogue mixing desk, the output of which is routed to the direct inputs of the second instance of Crusher. The sample loops used are representative of the original compositional techniques employed by the artist.

Within each instance of Crusher it is possible to load various user pre-set configurations governing all of the parameters available and the samples used as sound sources. These configurations are referred to as "Load lists". Selecting a new load list and specifying the "morph" time on the current instance of Crusher can achieve radical or gradual transitions.

Results cannot wholly be predicted which adds an extra dynamic and variable element to the process. Four samples are used in each of the load list set-ups. The loop samples and load lists are duplicated in each instance of Crusher.

The audio material used in this installation is therefore drawn from mixes using this set-up and rendered independently from the visual material that is placed in random order and repeated in cyclical patterns.

The Pyramid in the title refers to a structure made by the artist some years ago (now lost) which employed a variation upon the "ambient speaker system " created by Brian Eno.

In Eno's system a stereo pair of speakers were re-enforced with a third speaker using the left and right output of the amplifier. The speakers were configured in an equilateral triangle with the listener placed within the center of the triangle. In the variation system the speakers were wired up similarly but were grouped together and mounted on the sides of an equilateral triangular pyramid, the result being that to the listener there was no obvious sound source. The same configuration of speakers is used in this installation.

This installation is also carried out in proxy on behalf of the Experimental C&W artists Hank&Slim.

A long time exchange of ideas and recorded material has existed between these two legendary experimental musicians and their English counterparts Nigel Ayers and Robin Storey. (Aka "Nocturnal Emissions" and "Rapoon" respectively.)

Hank Sterman and Slim Fenster have careers stretching back to the early 50s. Originally traditional C&W artists (they were also well-used session musicians) their careers fell upon hard times due to a mixture of prejudice and drug abuse, prejudice coming in the form of misunderstandings over what they were attempting to do musically and outright hostility at their declared love for each other.

Their penchant for transvestism and their recorded desire to undergo sex changes and thus become lesbian lovers did nothing to endear them to the macho, redneck world of Nashville in the Early 1960s. Their careers languished and they remained in obscurity (literally living in Obscurity Texas) until contact began between them and Ayers/Storey in the Early 1980s.

Initially this contact was established through matters that had little to do directly with music. Slim had begun giving a series of lectures throughout the States and Canada in which he purported to be an ex-air force Colonel who was present at the infamous Roswell incident in New Mexico, July 1947. He claimed that he had been present at the incident as a helicopter pilot and had seen the crashed saucer and aliens first hand. After being involved in the subsequent cover-up he was later moved to the mysterious Area 51 where he remained until the early 1970s.

Of course this was a load of old tosh and Slim had never been inside area 51, but he had become friends with the ex-air force colonel whose experiences these were. Fear of reprisals by unknown agencies had driven the Colonel to hide out on the fringes of society, which is where he met up with Hank & Slim.

A year after their meeting the colonel disappeared without warning and without trace. Hank took this as proof of the veracity of the colonel's words whilst Slim understanding full well the cruelty of a world that ostracises those who have different ideas took it upon himself to spread the word about the alien conspiracy.

Sometime later H&S were visited by strange government agents and questioned about their involvement with the colonel. They both said they thought he was a crackpot and had merely humoured him in case he had turned nasty. After the agents had gone both Hank and Slim suffered memory loss and blackouts. It took years before they remembered where they had buried the transcripts of conversations with the colonel. (Though this could also be attributed to their ever-growing peyote habit.)

It was through documents and pamphlets that had been previously issued regarding this conspiracy that led Ayers and Storey to contact with Hank&Slim.

Documents were reproduced in the publication "Earthly Delights", (the subversive organ and brainchild of Ayers), and a form of trust was established between the two communicating pairs.

This trust was put to the test when Storey released his 1999 album "The Alien Question" in which the music on the record had been set around a covert tape recording of one of Slim's lectures.

At first Fenster was annoyed that the tapes had been used without permission but later he admitted he was "chuffed" with the resulting work. Trust was firmly re-established the following year when Ayers and Storey acted as executive producers for Hank& Slim's first album for more than two decades, the critically well-received " The World Turned Gingham". Hank Sterman was responsible for the original design of the pyramid speaker enclosure and sent the specifications over to Storey in 1984. (At this time Storey was still a member of the UK Post-industrial experimental ensemble Zoviet France.) Storey built a working model in 1986.

Sterman's intentions for this configuration of speaker system had been to enable de-coding of the transmissions between earth and the nearest alien colony on Mars. He claimed some success with the system but to everyone else the results sounded like static. Storey simply thought the system sounded "groovy" when you played regular music through it.

Zoviet France took the sound system up to Richard de Marco's gallery in Edinburgh with the intention of it being the centrepiece of a possible installation but the idea was never realised and the working model was lost or stolen.

Many years after the pyramid design Hank discovered that the if he fed the output of his modified satellite dish into his pc and routed it through the inputs of the software granular synthesiser "Crusher x" he could achieve comparable, if not better, results. (Some philistines have said it still just sounds like static.)

This installation therefore also serves as a totemic cipher of the ongoing heroic struggles of Hank and Slim to find peace and acceptance in an otherwise hostile world.