TO Art Agenda: Babble
Posted by Matthew Purvis / September 9, 2010
St. Catherine’s based multimedia artist Duncan MacDonald provides an interrogation of the variance between sound and vision in his exhibit at the pm Gallery. The sculptural component of the show features three dimensional objects he’s cast based on the visual mapping of sound recordings of objects falling. It’s a fascinating game of ekphrasis, shifting from one medium to one another, from object to its translation to the translation of the translation back into an object. These objects pattern the wall as loops of sound fill up the gallery space.
At the far end of the room, there are three screens set up playing various video pieces by the artist. The slow and atmospheric videos question the nature of viewing and constantly displace the experience, forcing a kind of objectivity into viewing which provides an interesting contrast to the questioning of the object established in the sculptures. Some of the videos are created through the superimposition of the elliptical cross fades of films and their conflation with a soundtrack which does nothing to clarify them. More striking though, is the reddish pinhole style recording of a flock of starlings in the sky while its witnesses mutter banalities at a slowed down and distorted speed.
