snow paper scissors rain

Sound installation. snow paper scissors rain was originally shown as a x 4 CD audio installation at Artsadmin, 7/10/99–17/10/99, 'a sound environment that remakes itself'. 'Recently I went down to Penzance, Cornwall to look at some potential sites for an installation. I took a lot of digital photos of the coastal landscape – stones, detergent bottles washed up by the tide, seaweed, rope. I took some other photos of cloud formations and patterns in the sand. They looked quite beautiful. However, when I tried to intervene in the landscape, for example, to write some words with stones, the results looked clumsy and artificial. Somehow the random motion of the tide throwing up a bright blue Daz carton on the shore, perfectly positioned, was more interesting to me than the direction of the artist's hand.' (From Michael Atavar snow paper scissors rain Exhibition Notes) This was an early attempt to step out of autobiography and present instead a polyphony of voices. The piece shows various influences (nakedly but unconsciously – William Burroughs, Can, Cornelius Cardew, cutups, Brian Eno, field recording, Kurt Schwitters, Karlheinz Stockhausen). Perhaps, at this stage, I was 'copying' in order to find a new way of working, a methodology that could take me beyond personal performance. Audio has been a strong direction for me and has often followed a parallel process to my writing or visual art making. In 2007, when I had stopped being a performance artist, I was still recording with the band A.R.P. (our first album I Walk Down A City Street Through Rays Of The Sun Blinding Me was released that year) and I have been active with my label Sgnuj ever since: recording and producing. We currently have over twenty releases, and (as Les Ondes), have performed several classics of the avant-garde. My latest collaborative book (with Roelof Bakker) 'A-B' opens with my story of meeting Paul Burwell and (through his influence) coming into contact with LMC in 1977. A link to the sound file can be heard here (though, as this was recorded at a later date, this only gives a faint impression of the audio in the room). ATTC-Minus 13: Michael Atavar for Psopo Bubble Supported: Artsadmin Bursary Scheme Sound: Electronics, recording, samples and audio setup by Michael Atavar Graphic reconstructions: Richard Scarborough