Single channel video

Developed and premiered in 2018 at a Grand Theatre Groningen Residency, supported by Cryptic & The Hugh Fraser Foundation
Photography: Neil Jarvie

2018

In collaboration with Alicia Matthews

Rottinghuis is a nightmarish creature-feature, an investigation into the dark side of the web and an unnerving depiction of disintegration.

Drawing on research into hauntology and psycho-physical online habits, this work languishes in the interstitial world of our phantasies and projected digital selves. Collected audio fragments from messageboards and anonymous platforms such as Zello provide real-time source material that forms the narrative of the piece. Disjointed conversations, casual threats of violence and dark humour are injected into 3D visualisations of familiar domestic environments and insidious routines.

A Cryptic commission in partnership with the Grand Theatre, Groningen & CMMAS (Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras), Mexico, in association with Cove Park.

Initial development supported by Puppet Animation Scotland – Creative Fund, PRIM (Productions Réalisations Indépendantes de Montréal) Montreal and SAT (Société des arts technologiques) Montreal.

Photography: Louise Mather

2017

Inspired by scales at the limits of perception this work draws on influences ranging from neuroscience to psychedelia, electron microscopy to nuclear paranoia and manifests in a collision of scientific specimens and esoteric machines.

A Cryptic commission in association with Cove Park For touring enquiries, please contact claire@cryptic.org.uk

Photography: Culture Station 284, Lifepatch, Niels Knelis Meijer

First shown as part of CCA Present Futures 2021, produced by Feral

thanks to:

Jon Macleod
Anne Campbell
Ian McHardy
Euan Macleod
Cass Ezeji

Standstill of the Moon in the North: part 1’ is a short film & initial culmination of research into Neolithic technologies & cultures of the Western Isles.

The erection of stone monoliths that chart the lunar calendar has been described as the “the fall” – a biblical reference to the way in which humans began to see themselves as separate from, and gain control of, the natural environment through the use of technology. This foreshadowing of the anthropocene pulls a thread between the nativity of society, the climate of environmental anxiety that we currently endure and the species’ drive towards salvation/destruction in the externality of space. In collapsing this 5000 year timespan through the use of graphics & film and a soundtrack of vocals & stone instruments we hope to find points of joyous collectivity, a poetic hauntology of rock as records and an impressionistic vision of the liminal places of perception.

4 Dec 21 – 22 Jan 22, An Lanntair

A multimedia installation which explores the twilight of the combustion engine as a metaphor for our age of consumption.

Reflecting on our contemporary environmental condition, END OF ENGINES uses oil as an alchemical motif. Linking the deep history of the earth to the present moment and our immediate environmental future, oil has the ability to transcend and connect aeons.

The aesthetics of petroleum architecture, Plutonic mythology and car customisation are welded together in an installation comprising of a collection of robotic and sound sculptures.

A Cryptic Commission in partnership with Cove Park

26min single channel video, binaural composition for parabolic speaker, 4min single channel video for LCD screen.

Installation photos by Jack Wrigley

time, take my side

A glacial fiction and an impressionistic vision of the liminal places of perception are explored in this moving image and sound installation by Alicia Matthews and Robbie Thomson.

Told from the perspective of rocks, healing springs, radio, air and emptiness; the work re-imagines an island’s environment and the traces of it’s former inhabitants. Stone monoliths and steel antennas bookend 5 millennia of monument erection, communion and the appeasing / harnessing of invisible forces necessary for survival as well as for metaphysical ends.

The species’ drive towards salvation or destruction in the externality of space underscores both the veneration of the lunar standstill in neolithic society and the hypercapitalist spectacle of Space X rockets in the climate of environmental anxiety that it currently endures. Somewhere between the moon and the water, tectonic plates fold quartzite veins into animism, shale is fractured and the burns erode.