Tempo tempo
May 27, 2020, 01:54 PM
Piece based on creeping baby doll patent model by Robin Bale.
"This piece was a response to the “Creeping Baby”, a prototype crawling baby doll in the Smithsonian collection. This was an obviously creepy object; the juxtaposition of naturalistic face and hands with a (very beautiful) clockwork interior placed it somewhere around the uncanny valley as well as squarely in the territory of hybrid monstrosities created by the mean kid in the first Toy Story film. I first wanted to work with that uncanniness, but then came to think about how the object would sound when working.
"The clockwork mechanism led me to think about the temporalities that we live in (or under) and an economic system that, whilst promising transcendence of whatever “now” we happen to be trapped in if enough hard work and aspiration is applied, just seems to personalise failure to escape systemic problems that no individual can escape through their own efforts. Hence, the lyrical content and the recurring clockwork noises.
"The initial slowing down to a halt and the drum track that doesn't keep a steady pulse, but is more a device that emphasises the syllabic patterns in my words (although it is still just a loop) is a way of getting the constant falling behind-catching up-falling behind temporality that this situation (the purported “End of History”; late capitalism) has condemned so many to live in."
Part of the Smithsonian Treasures project, a collection of new sound works inspired by items from the Smithsonian Museums’ collections - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/smithsonian
"This piece was a response to the “Creeping Baby”, a prototype crawling baby doll in the Smithsonian collection. This was an obviously creepy object; the juxtaposition of naturalistic face and hands with a (very beautiful) clockwork interior placed it somewhere around the uncanny valley as well as squarely in the territory of hybrid monstrosities created by the mean kid in the first Toy Story film. I first wanted to work with that uncanniness, but then came to think about how the object would sound when working.
"The clockwork mechanism led me to think about the temporalities that we live in (or under) and an economic system that, whilst promising transcendence of whatever “now” we happen to be trapped in if enough hard work and aspiration is applied, just seems to personalise failure to escape systemic problems that no individual can escape through their own efforts. Hence, the lyrical content and the recurring clockwork noises.
"The initial slowing down to a halt and the drum track that doesn't keep a steady pulse, but is more a device that emphasises the syllabic patterns in my words (although it is still just a loop) is a way of getting the constant falling behind-catching up-falling behind temporality that this situation (the purported “End of History”; late capitalism) has condemned so many to live in."
Part of the Smithsonian Treasures project, a collection of new sound works inspired by items from the Smithsonian Museums’ collections - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/smithsonian