Alan Smith in collaboration with Phil Ogg + bio

NVC 100 is an enquiry into evolved non verbal dialogue over 10 points of shared experience. Ten audio and video time-lines were made sequentially with no pre-emptive discussion regarding context, content, subject or tempo. The content of the first ten 10 minute A/V was left to chance. All subsequent a/vs arise from an accumulative process, informed by what came before.

Throughout the project Phil produced sound for each a/v in his studio while I worked separately on the video. On completion of each Phil and I would meet and share the experience of the coupled a/v while complying with the essential rule that no analysis of the previously completed a/v or suggestion regarding the stuff of the subsequent 10-minute piece. After viewing each ten minute component we would return to our respective studios to work on the next phase.

The resulting 100 minutes of a/v posses a strange coherence and the work could be viewed with no knowledge of its pre-designed methodology. But it’s the constraints of the process that delivered the many coincidences’ that arise in each of the 10minute a/v’s, to reveal an exchange of thoughts and most importantly provide evidence of a developed method of communication beyond the verbal.

Fernando Poyatos classified the primary qualities of ‘paralanguage’ as timbre, resonance, volume, tempo, pitch, register and rhythm. Margaret Mead pointed out the importance of gesture as communication and language saying that when a gesture expresses a meaning or idea and arouses that idea in another individual then we have a significant symbol.

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