Be cloudy

During UK lockdown, I’ve contributed to Forced Collaboration, which brokers cross-disciplinary interactions between artists around the world and shares the results online. It's run by artist Georgia Gendall.

For this quickfire 'Self Isolation Special', I set the instruction 'be cloudy'. The instruction is considered a piece of work as much as the collaborative outcome, and the identities of the paired artists are not revealed (even to each other) until the work is made public. My instructions were realised by Alice Mahoney.

I also made a new piece of work in response to instructions by Haddas Eshel. 

forcedcollaboration.org

about body unknown with something alien

about body unknown

with something alien

the human talk

body unknown about

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | Work in progress - THG Nature Shorts | 2020

I'm working with Megan Calver on a new participatory live artwork for the Thelma Hubert Gallery in response to their current (but temporarily closed) Richard Long exhibition. This show is touring as part of ARTIST ROOMS.

All being well, we'll be working with young people in Honiton to realise the work later this year but, for now, the gallery is sharing our work in progress as part of their online Nature Shorts series.

Drawing on Richard Long’s use of words in relation to landscape, we will invite the other-than-human to collaborate in the making of new texts. For now, we are experimenting with buckets, basins and baths in our homes, using items such as wax paper discs to stand in for floating leaves and logs.

Richard Long Being in the Moment at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton (run extended to cover gallery closure).

the predecessor to your prayer

the predecessor to your prayer | still from 1m 27s of digital video | 2020

During UK lockdown, I’ve made a contribution to Forced Collaboration, which brokers cross-disciplinary interactions between artists around the world and shares the results online.

I was asked to “Think about the idea of chaos” and given a long set of instructions. In response, I made a short video piece that draws heavily on Conway’s Game of Life. This is a game played with a 2D grid of square cells, each of which can be alive or dead. The player plots an initial configuration, after which every cell interacts with its neighbours according to a simple set of rules. Applied repeatedly over time, these interactions give rise to complexity.

Such cellular automata were integral to the development of chaos theory, and are used today in simulating the spread of infectious diseases. In a sad coincidence, the game’s inventor, John Horton Conway died this month aged 82 from complications related to Covid-19.

Bounded within a 1:1 (square) aspect ratio, my video contrasts regular grids and binary systems with natural forms and random video 'noise'. The film’s soundtrack draws on the quirks of modern dictation and text-to-voice software to deliver a torrent of increasingly panicked language in a steady electronic voice.

the predecessor to your prayer can be viewed on Vimeo and via the Forced Collaboration site.  My collaborator (who set the instructions) is Haddas Eshel.