My mother posted me an ECG printout (rhythm strip), knowing about my interest in graphic scores, having noted that it did look a bit like something useful. 2 years later, I finally realised how I could use it. I am interested in how people, collectively and individually, interpret similar material and what the combined effect might be.
Taking the three outputs on the strip, I researched how to work out the actual bpm and then used the graph paper on the strip and each output wave to create a score with bar lines on tracing paper. The section I had amounted to 11 bars at 50bpm. The respondents to my very vague Facebook post calling for 'contributors to an experiment' were allocated one of the three parts in the order in which they responded, to ensure equal distribution. I had absolutely no idea what would come back or how I would put the parts together until they did. Thank you so much to all who contributed - so many interpretations of my mother's heart! I think it's beautiful. And she would have found it utterly ridiculous but have been secretly highly faltered, I'm sure!
Here's the final piece and links to the 'instructions' and individual scores can be found below:
INSTRUCTIONS
aVF SCORE
II SCORE
III SCORE
The starting point for almost all my work is a graphic one. Sometimes it's something I see in my mind that conjures up a sound, sometimes the other way round, but there is always a graphic.
I first started working in this way in the late '90s when I discovered that 'synaesthesia' actually existed and I wasn't mad [much to my relief!]. I spent a long while researching it and ended up writing my dissertation at Goldsmiths about the links between our senses and exploring how we could extend/enhance our experience of an art form by combining them. After much cogitating (and quite an extended fag break) I started re-examining these ideas in my own practice.
A selection of these scores can be found HERE.
