Giant - Immersive Audio and Video Installation
 

Giant is one of my most ambitious pieces created in Cambridge while doing my PhD in the 90s. - using video projectors and multi-channel audio. It was installed at the University’s West Road Concert Hall and Anglia Ruskin’s Paradise Street Studios on several occasions from 1998 to 2001. The main sonic component originated from cello recordings that were extensively manipulated in SoundDesigner and played on a keyboard through SampleCell into Cubase. The recordings were already deliberately of low bit depth and sample rate. They were slowed down so that fundamental frequencies slipped below the range of hearing, helping to create a grainy texture that was then layered. Additional field recordings and an Roland SH101 synth were also used. The parts were mixed to the eight tracks of an ADAT and played back over eight speakers to create a soundscape that shifted around a room.

The video portions were all recorded with analogue cameras onto VHS and mixed on a two deck linear system, with techniques like re-filming from cheap TVs with colour and contrast cranked to maximum. At the time I was very influenced by the films and techniques of Kennith Anger and was trying to recreate his visceral multilayered lurid disorientation.