ARTIST STATEMENT
Sound is a ubiquitous element in the human experience – its presence or absence defines spaces, emotions, experiences, and time. Vision is the sense most traditionally associated with fine art. My explorations and experimentation in art are focused on the active process of listening to, looking at, and feeling art; slowing down time and linking sensoria to allow for immersion in a whole body experience.
I began as a professional touring musician, morphed into the world of electronic sounds incorporating and mixing live visual elements in Live Cinema performance, and now work in the realm of combined visual and auditory stimuli, creating the experience of synaesthesia. My intent is to bring the viewer to a greater realization of the impact sound has on our contemporary world and the links sound and hearing create to history, spirituality and understanding. I have looked to the works of John Cage, Brian Eno, La Monte Young and Max Neuhaus and then searched for the ocular link.
Through the early experiments of Ernst Chladni and Dr. Hans Jenny I was exposed to the physical and visual properties of sound. I have used modified and custom-built science laboratory tools to create multisensory environments that continue my interests in the slow and meditative nature of minimalist electronic sound compositions, and the experience of deep listening. The visual elements within include still photography, HD video and Macro HD video created by sound as mediated through artist and machinery. The primary creative process involves using sound in pure and compositional forms to animate particulate matter and liquids; playing sound through these materials, drawing, shaping, composing, sculpting, and recording the results.
By exploring resonant sound and pure tone frequencies that draw and reveal wave patterns (the science of Cymatics), I have sculpted a collection of images and animations that range from simple minimalist lines and forms to decorative and complex arabesques reminiscent of Islamic architectural elements, Tibetan walking meditation gardens and medieval manuscript illuminations. Most recently I have revealed sound energy movement witnessed through light beams and their potentials to heal the body, and open the third eye. These visuals and sounds are used in composition in the same way as tones are used in “music,” and the resulting collision of neurologic/electrical phenomenon bring the synaesthetic “malfunction” to life.
Gary James Joynes