Sound artist tunes in at DCA

Pop music, everyday conversation and incidental noises are the unusual palette of sound artist Paul Rooney, currently resident at DCA.

Hunched over a coffee in the Jute Bar, the denim jacketed, art fellow talks earnestly about his excitement at being in Dundee. Behind his hesitant speech is a sense of this ginger haired sprite, listening in to another channel in his head. Music? Extraneous noises off? Who knows.

A Liverpudlian who majored in painting at Edinburgh College of Art, Paul has moved across the senses in the ten years since his graduation, to develop his ideas in audio art. But while most sound artists pursue the abstract, drawing on avante garde music, Paul is unashamedly hitched to pop. Commercial, popular music provides the raft of sound on which he constructs his particular form of art which could be inspired by the sound of the tannoy, or a conversation with a cleaner.

In fact it is the mundane dialogue from an Internet chat room for gardeners which has inspired one of the first projects on which Paul started work during his December to March residency. While still in residency at Durham University, he set the words to his own music to form a "mini opera" for four voices which overlap and harmonise as they communicate, internet-style.

"I composed it bit by bit as I recorded it, in four tracks, singing a little of a part and doing the harmony, responding and giving the dialogue," he explained. His lack of musical notation means that the music only exists on tape at present but with the help of university music co-ordinator Graeme Stevenson it will soon be committed to paper and, more excitingly, there are plans for a public performance with members of the University chamber choir.

"The loose relationship with other communicators on the Internet fascinates me. I've tried to capture that distant, separated quality and translate it into a real event with real people in real space-I've always been obsessed with music. Mentally I am always thinking in terms of music."

Other sounds he's toying with do, indeed, involve a conversation with a cleaner and the tannoy system in the Jute. Listen to this space.

Next Page
Return to February 2002 Contact