Sonic Graffiti compostions are made to mould around the encoded sounds of chosen spaces and environments. Nearly all public spaces conjure up memories of sound; the associative noises of a playground for example are the screams of children playing. Some of the pieces are created to compliment their environments, with harmony and consonance, while others act subversively, made to disrupt the equilibrium with dissonance, irregularity and noise.
So, much the same as when a graffiti artist plans his next piece for walls that are often too clean, I try to alter the sonic landscape of areas that just sound too mundane, everyday and unchanged.
Acting as physical vehicles for the compositions are specially tailored players; re-commissioned radios and tape machines, rewired and modified until they take on character and identity. They are positioned and left to subject their content into the world. In visual correlation with the sounds they produce, some players blend in while others demand attention.
Essentially these can be left to the elements, to degrade over time as batteries fade and the paint flakes. The Sonic Graffiti in action is never the same twice. The ‘performance’ is at the mercy of the goings on of the space and its inhabitants. Subjection provokes reactions and I try and record these to create new fixed media pieces.
I have documented the Sonic Graffiti in an installation that exhibits the players, photos and the recordings via some interactive software. It is set to be displayed at the 2009 Young Artists International Biennale in Skopje, Macedonia this September.
