sound artist | composer
Everybodys' Happy Nowadays
2022
Everybody's Happy Nowadays is a collaborative work with experimental photographer Mark Tamer. The work is an investigation into the potential for objects / artworks to be equally represented in sight and sound. Would it be possible to create a dual-media object where both image and sound are clearly representations of only each other?
The entire collection of work was presented in an online gallery space, one that was also designed to put forward an accessible alternative to the three-dimensional and VR spaces that began to populate online during and post-pandemic.
The work is viewable via desktop / laptop at: https://www.imastudio.org/gallery
Everybody's Happy Nowadays - Gapless Album with Artworks
Stills from the Digital Exhibition Space
IMA Studio Digital Gallery
The IMA digital gallery space is unique by a few measures. It was designed to go against the grain of contemporary trends which often aim for the most cutting-edge / advanced experience. The problems with three-dimensional and VR spaces are:
a. this ends up excluding large groups of people. i.e. those who do not have access to equipment or devices capable of accessing these spaces, those that have cognitive disabilities, or struggle with motion/spatial movement, and those that do not meet the required level of technology fluency.
b. this create distance from the experience of art, because the space is designed to be navigated around, and admired, which distracts the viewer from the art itself.
c. scale is often played with, distorting reality. Artworks are showcased but all objective and tangible senses of the work in a real-space are lost.
The IMA digital gallery was purposefully designed to mimic the experience of a real gallery, where a viewer walks into a gallery and up to a wall, with nothing between them and the work. Whilst visually the work is hung on walls, ideas of rooms and directions are ignored, allowing a viewer to simply click on one of 4 walls, in one of 4 rooms.
The design takes advantage of widely accessible technology (web HTML format), to create a fully accessible experience for those with limited technological fluency and spatial/navigation issues.