Subversive submersibles
Joe Kelly's Ultra Sound installation offers total immersion for its viewers
EXHIBIT PREVIEW
ULTRA SOUND
Joe Kelly
Opens Friday, October 11
The New Gallery
Filmmaker and installation artist Joe Kelly has lived and worked in Calgary for the past 10 years, but his coastal Newfoundland upbringing surfaces in his latest project, Ultra Sound, an audio-visual installation recorded in and consisting predominantly of water.
Kelly has placed an aquarium filled with water in The New Gallery's main space. A speaker and hydrophone (underwater microphone), suspended from the ceiling, are submerged in the water. Also inside the tank, a piece of sandblasted glass serves as a screen for the video projection of an underwater xylophone performance by Calgary-based composer Malcolm Lim. Guided by Kelly's parameters, Lim's two-minute composition was initially recorded in a studio, but at the gallery the audio is transmitted first through water, and then, as an altered composition, into the headphones provided.
Ultra Sound is not the first of Kelly's projects to feature his fascination with water: as a part of last year's Artcity, he created another installation, entitled Waterfall, in a bathroom at the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers' former location. Given Waterfall's locale, it was usually viewed alone. Similarly, Ultra Sound is intended to submerge its viewers one at a time in an audio-visual aquatic experience. Granted, many can view Kelly's installation simultaneously, but completely aquatic immersion occurs only for the person wearing the headphones.
His intent is to represent the experience of being in water, and as Lim is seen playing the xylophone, his body appears to drift witht he motion of the water.
"When you are in the water, any slight movement of the water just moves your body because it has the same density," explains Kelly, whose scientific curiosity leads him to approach both filmmaking (Kelly's acclaimed shorts have screened locally, nationally and internationally) and art installation as an inventor, creating devices for each projectand developing his own method of solving problems.
"I work within my resources and I enjoy the process and adapt to what comes up," says Kelly. "The way the piece looks when it is finished is a result of the process and the things that happen along the way."
Kelly's fascination with technology and creating new uses for existing technology is apparent as he describes his numerous ongoing projects from the chair in his laboratory/studio. His installations have provided him with an opportunity for "presenting media," a phrase Kelly uses to describe the intention and function of his work.
He builds objects and creates machines in order to display various media – for example, each component in Ultra Sound is required as a conduit or platform for a specific audio or visual medium. Kelly reveals to the viewer what they are hearing and seeing in a minimal, streamlined fashion (e.g., Lim playing the xylophone while holding his breath underwater) – there are no arbitrary elements to confuse the audience.
Nevertheless, the piece might amuse, frighten or even sadden its viewers, as Kelly believes there is something sad about being alone in the water, but ultimately, the reaction that Ultra Sound provokes in each individual will remain as fluid and intangible as water.
Oddly, for an artist who wishes to give his audience the experience of being completely immersed in water, he prefers to stay out of the stuff himself.
"I can't swim," says Kelly. "During the video shoot (for Ultra Sound), I was quite worried about falling in." |
