Output details

Circles

This film is a collaboration between filmmaker Neil Henderson, and visual artist Polly Read. The film documents drawings the audience made during a performance given by the musician and improviser Evan Parker. Polly Read gave each member of the audience a small booklet and pencil; on each page (8 pages per book) a circle has been drawn. The audience was asked to respond to the music over the course of the performance by drawing in the book. The film has been screened at Kettle’s Yard Open 2008, Cambridge, Turner Contemporary Open 2009, Margate, Kent; and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2009.

The project is concerned with the relationship between notation and improvisation. The 20th century saw conventional means of notating develop toward more complex graphic means of visualizing music. Works by Ligeti, Cage, Feldman and Cardew for example all make use of complex and often very beautiful visual scores. Improvised music by contrast doesn’t rely on notation and the philosophy behind ‘free’ improvisation encourages a highly democratic form of musical communication free of the composer’s instructions. The project attempts to engage the audience critically with ideas around graphic notation, composition, improvisation and drawing.

The idea behind the film is to animate these images bringing them back into conflict with one of the musical pieces performed on the night. The results are a mixture of abstract marks, impressionistic portraits, and observations about other audience members. To what extent can/do these drawings reflect the music played during the evening?