Contact

For about a decade centred around the millennium, I was extremely interested in the idea of using my video camera as ’seeing paintbrush’. For a long time I’ve been interested in Buddhism in general, and Ch’an or Zen brushwork in particular. In this spirit, I was interested in the expressive, gestural, direct interaction with the camera and the world around me.

Helmut Brinker, in his book – Zen in the Art of Painting – describes the Zen painter’s ink line thus:

“The flowing ink-line, obedient to laws which, in the final analysis, have nothing to do with the object portrayed, does not conceal its generation; rather, it lets the viewer follow the process of its becoming, and thus take part in an act of creation which is at once timeless and fleeting.”

This for me, is a perfect analogy of what I was trying to achieve with these single-take works of pure flux.

Trying to short-circuit thinking and analysis in order to enjoy the moment of creation and sensory / sensual interaction with the world.

In March 2000 I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. One of the highlights of my journey, was a visit to the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. It was there that my love for Islamic calligraphy was rekindled. I was also fortunate to meet Dr. Sulaiman Hj. Esa who graciously shared his knowledge of Islamic art with me.

Inspired by these seemingly disparate traditions, I went to the famous Petronas “Twin” Towers and recorded this video.

I made the music in 1999 as one of a series of one-take, straight-to-DAT, improvisations. It was made with a few samples loaded in my Ensoniq ASR-10. Spontaneously, without any multitracking or sequencing; I tapped the keys and generated this soundtrack – in the same spirit as the video footage.

The video was originally completed in 2001. In 2024, I remastered it in UHD with minor changes to the titles.