A Cryptic commission for Cryptic Nights

Documentation from performance in 85A’s Electric Spectacle

2011

Creating sonic shivers, pelvic quivers and suffocating skittish shadows… An old piano, two cellos, eight violins and other instruments come to life with a cacophony of rust and stone, oak and glass, hair and bone towers incandescent.

Taking inspiration from psychological anomaly Folie à deux (shared delusional psychosis), Inducer is an immersive animated environment where musicians and sound sculptures merge into the unsettling realms of the unreal.

Inducer is a commission by Cryptic Nights from Glasgow-based artist Robbie Thomson. Sarah Milne and Jack Wrigley collaborate with Thomson, fusing kinetic sculpture and musical instrument design to create an off-kilter, curious and peculiar world which promises to delight, disarm and disorientate in equal measure.

A Cryptic commission in association with Cove Park

Photography: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

2015

Rusting embers of industry litter the slopes of the New Alps, an open air burial on eroded ground above the tailings of mineral extraction. Bauxite may have been refined here at one time, the vast red lagoon is hemmed by a concrete levee that forms an unwavering alkaline shore before the regiments of cliffs. The earth reverberates from the rhythmic charge of automated machinery, burrowing conquerors reigning in a sublime manufactured landscape, emulating purpose in repetition.

Lines define the new topography of these mountains, two nuclear points connect to form a sharp horizon that marches on like an infinity pool. Progress is best sold with a converging perspective. When seen from the side a railway track becomes a chronology of movement, energy, labour and resources, perpendicular to the pursuit of leisure.

The chalet is a bomb shelter, the hydro station is an ornamental tomb. This is a remote place. We are removed from it.

Supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland and ‘AMPS’ - a commission from Jerwood Charitable Foundation / Nick Anderson. Further support from: Tramway, The Work Room, Gessnerallee Zurich, Dance Base Edinburgh, Movement Research New York and Live Collision International Festival. 

2017

In collaboration with Ultimate Dancer

Ultra-terrestrial temporary dance proclaiming the historic chant: tnahc cirotsih eht gnimialcorp ecnad yraropmet lairtserret-artlU

A vision of a giant or an alien with a message; Ultimate Dancer and Robbie Thomson bring discoveries from the dark places. Expect a neo-ancient display of natural-high inducing lights, sounds and trippy ritual dances.

In 2015, Ultimate Dancer went into a darkness retreat for five days – a purpose-built room isolated from all light and sound. Ceremonial darkness is a classical method for accessing vibrant unconscious and super-conscious states. The experience was deeply transformative; at times hallucinogenic, emotionally moving, physically painful and has thoroughly inspired the creation of YAYAYA AYAYAY.

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

Photography: Culture Station 284, Lifepatch, Niels Knelis Meijer

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.