We listen to the crushing sounds of footsteps in the ice, to the music of Bjork. We talk about aural and gestural responses to what Antarctic expeditioners tell us of the landscape.
As a student of music, writing and art, Jack improvises with word, sound and mark-making. I capture in camera his rhythmic gesturing in paint over a lightbox. Marks, words and sounds are made by smearing and drawing into paint with a spatula, and pressing into it with wood block letters. There is an internal dialogue at work throughout this process, between sound, gesture and image, linke a conversation that has a beginning, a middle and an end. A non-verbal narrative is sought, as in ‘straight ahead’ animation techniques, where one move follows another, with little or no premeditation. Normal McLaren used this technique. Stephen Eastaugh uses this way of working up a still image, described by Paul Klee as ‘taking a line for a walk.’ This improvised way of working has been formalised by performing arts educators as Rudolph Laban, Hanny Exiner and Alwyn Nicholais and Al Wunder, through which methods of Structured Improvization have evolved, where ‘scores’ are devised as structures within which to improvise. The American choreographer Merce Cunningham worked in this way with visual artist Robert Rauschenberg.
and what an extradinary day it was.