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fragmentsa fusion of pictures and music by mat clum and patrick fitzgerald click on the thumbnails below to enlarge the pictures - the music, mp3 format, is available by clicking on the enlarged image or on the titles below
the ideaPatrick - "Mat told me how he was doing his paintings, that he was creating thick underlayers of various colours/textures and then scratching into them. Making false writing/words and then hacking away at it, the communication not acheived. I tried to liken this to making music, taking a basic sample from an old favourite record, about 3 seconds long, and then 'painting' over it with guitars and basses and drum loops, and then scraping away at the end result, punching holes and adding noise baffles. I limited myself to 3 minutes length and to these five layers. I really like the way they've turned out, the way they match with the images, the way they sound familiar and yet unplaceable." Mat - "This whole project has raised some interesting questions over definitions for me. These pieces are so evasive. They're not paintings because there's a virtual enhancement, but they're not completely virtual because there is an element of paint on the canvas. And then, of course, is the big question, which is - what do you call something that doesn't exist except when a button is pushed and it appears? (Music?) So are these works even closer to the visual equivalent of aural/sub-aural soundscape than I first imagined? These pieces only exist as fragments in the ether which is exactly what I set out trying to represent. So really, in the end they're not actually representations at all. They are the thing itself." And in an email to his brother: "As for how they're created - first I paint, then I scan, then I paint and fiddle in Photoshop until I feel like it's done. In some ways I feel like I've really hit upon a process that suits me better than any other process I've used in the past. I think part of what's held me back from really mucking in with the paints on canvas is that I so often get the colors wrong that I get discouraged waiting for the paint to dry to start over. Being able to go in after the basics are done and tweak and fiddle allows me to color correct in a way I can't with paints. Now, I guess one could argue that I'm too lazy to do it with paints or that I'm not intuitive enough to get it right on the first go or don't have the patience to continue re-working in the medium until I've got it down but all that taken into account (and it's probably perfectly correct) it still seems the most natural way to work. There's something about the combination of processes that completely speaks to me. It satisfies my dual needs of an artistic tradition that comes with the physical use of a paintbrush and then the 21st century impatience that informs my life on a daily basis. Not to mention that I've always been very comfortable (too comfortable I've always felt) within the linear confines of the computer. Working this way helps to break me out of those confines while still working within a language I'm familiar with...I'd like to think that what I'm doing is transitional and only fits this particular era that we're living in as an information society. This transitional period as we move from the old school of people who only value 'actual' physical things to the new generation who are learning to value 'virtual' things just as importantly. This has made me think very seriously about what makes the physical arts like painting and sculpture important - is it the thing itself or the essential idea? Or is the thing itself crucially important to the essential idea? (Is this a question that music, dance and the performance arts have been grappling with forever?) Whether I like it or not it only makes sense that these images exist in the ether and behind a screen. That's why I'm not thinking of them as representations anymore but the actual thing itself. The actual sub-visual/sub-aural noise in the landscape. You can't quite grasp this informational static which bombards us world-wide on a dialy basis so I don't think you should be able to grasp these particular images. Maybe what I'm doing is bringing that white noise just a little bit closer and into focus. Your description of 'static in the landscape' is exactly what I'm trying to elicit as a response so I'm pleased that that's how you interpreted what you're seeing. I'll be interested to hear what you think of the music that goes with them."
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