Victoria Evans

Oscillations II is a new iteration of the work first shown at the CCA in Glasgow. This new version includes two new sculptural works ‘Slackwater’ and ‘Suspensions’

Oscillations II was installed over the two room gallery space at the Tolbooth in Stirling and featured as part of Stirling Science Festival. The exhibition ran from October 13 to October 31, 2020

One minute video documentation by Siyao Li can be viewed here.

Two channel video, eight channel sound installation, glass and resin sculptures with tidal detritus, sono-haptic seating.

Inspired by science and the complex inter-related nature of the physical world, this immersive installation explores the way distant or invisible phenomena can have a tangible effect on our day-to-day lives

Using a process of data sonification as a starting point, artist Victoria Evans translates the rhythmic, cyclical patterns of the tides into musical notes and couples it with works reflecting seasonal changes, lunar and solar orbits.

By combining sound, video, sculptural and haptic elements, Oscillations brings this experience on an immediate, physical level to the audience, creating liminal landscapes rich in sensory and poetic associations.

Artist: Victoria Evans

Produced/Curated: Javier Aregger.

Video documentation: Siyao Li

Programmer: Tara McCloughlin

Coding by Jamie Ferguson

Data supplied by Colin Bell, National Oceanography Centre

With thanks to James Wrigglesworth, Caralin Montgomery-Cichy and all at the Tolbooth and Stirling Science Festival for their support

Images: Siyao Li; Sara Alonso; Neil Wells

What is the sound of an orbit?

Deep Space Call and Response is a 12’30” audio artwork made for the Inspace Space and Satellites Residency at Design Informatics in Edinburgh. The residency took place during May to July 2020 and culminated in an online exhibition.

Coding by Sam Healy at Ray Interactive

Scientific advice and data supplied by Matthew Read at the European Space Agency

Funded by Data-Driven Innovation and Edinburgh Futures Insititue

The work has also been selected through an international open call to be broadcast on Radiophrenia in November 2020.

The satellites that orbit close to our planet and the craft that carry them deep into space are capable of collecting huge swathes of data relating to a range of human concerns: those that are immediate and pragmatic – such as monitoring changes in air pollution or the melting of Arctic sea-ice; as well as those that are more distant and esoteric – such as mapping the dynamics of a black hole or a supernova. But how do we actually keep in touch with these tiny modules in the vastness of space? And how do they communicate the information they have gathered back to the Earth?

Victoria worked with data from the European Space Agency (ESA) to uncover the patterns of movement and communication between twelve space missions and the network of ground stations that support them. Using a process of data sonification as the basis for a creative composition, the piece enables these complex interactions to be experienced poetically, through sound.

Deep Space Call and Response is a meditation on the desire to reach out over distance and the importance of international cooperative networks for human survival.

The twelve ESA missions rely on a network of ground stations (giant transceiver dishes) in maintaining contact with the Earth. Since our planet rotates, individual stations have line of sight with a mission for only a portion of each day.

Where continuous contact is required, several ground stations must act together in a relay formation. As one station dips below the horizon, another rises to take its place, and so on.

The data from these interactions forms different patterns depending on the position of a mission in relation to Earth as well as its orbital type and frequency. These patterns to form the basis of the sonification (use of non-speech audio to perceptualise information).

The first step was to create distinctive sonic identities for each of the space missions. Word associations helped build a conceptual bridge between my factual research and the domestic sounds and vocals I recorded and processed. In order for the patterns of satellite movement and communication to be audible across the range of missions, a one-year to twelve-minute time compression was settled on.

The next step was to allow the data to intervene in the composition process, triggering pitch and rhythmic changes as well as other modulations such as EQ, panning or delays. Lastly, the arrangement, together with the final mix, gave the composition its overall shape and atmosphere.

Click Here for Stereo Audio (headphones recommended)

Immersive installation at CCA Glasgow. Eight-channel audio, two-channel video, sono-haptic seating, seaweed and tidal detritus. Curated by Javier Aregger.

Documentation by Siyao Li.

Supported by ForEnjoymentCIC, Glasgow Life, and GSA Curatorial. With special thanks to: Jamie Ferguson and Colin Bell.

Curator’s Text:

Inspired by science and the complex inter-relatedness of the physical world, Oscillations investigates the way distant or invisible phenomena can have a tangible effect on our day-to-day lives.

Using data sonification (the use of audio to interpret structured information) as a starting point, Evans worked with computer scientist Jamie Ferguson to translate tidal data into musical notes and make audible the rhythmic, cyclical tidal patterns of the Clyde.

By taking this concept further and exploring the interplay of tidal changes with the seasons, lunar and solar orbits over the course of an entire year, the artist produced an hypnotic multi-channel audiovisual work.

Oscillations brings this experience on an immediate, physical level to the audience by combining sound with video and haptic elements, creating an immersive landscape rich in sensory and poetic associations.

The techniques and resources available to artists through interdisciplinary work, far from divorcing art from experience instead provide us with new tools for exploring the nature of our world and how we perceive it. These collaborative approaches make up the fertile ground where experiential art finds its home.

By harnessing these tools, Oscillations provides an opportunity to explore our surroundings through an emotional and corporeal involvement. Our responses carry cognitive and sensory associations not always traceable to discrete causes. In Evan's work nothing is inherently separate from anything else, reflecting the temporal and holistic quality of experience.

The artist also draws together phenomena which may seem distant, but that are nevertheless present in our day-to-day lives. By revealing them in liminal spaces, Oscillations explores the constant interplay between determinancy and indeteminancy. Shifting from reassuring stability to breaks and ruptures, it echoes the balance of the familiar and unfamiliar fundamental to temporal art.

In these states of liminality, our experiences temporarily unravel and are rewoven. We forge new connections. We catch ourselves in the act of perceiving and connecting to our environments. It is in these very moments that we may begin to catch glimpses of a reality deeper than the mere appearances through which artworks are announced.

Javier Aregger

11’39'“ looped moving image installation.

Link to full video on Vimeo

This floor projected video with it’s rhythmic pace, disorientating POV and soundtrack of breath and footfalls, seeks to evoke a mimetic response in the visitor, allowing for physical and psychological immersion.

Part of the conference and group show Pilgrims and Pilgrimages at Govan Old Parish Church, this was the first UK showing of the work, originally shown in Athens, Greece in 2017.

A meditation on dislocation, time, movement and becoming, the piece grew out of a year long performative Instagram project @IWalkAroundTheSun filmed between Midsummer 2016 and 2017

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Pilgrims and Pilgrimage:  Sights and sounds of the sacred was a one-day Conference and two-week exhibition curated by: Jim Harold, David Jasper and Donald Orr and involving artists, poets, musicians and theologians. 

The exhibits and conference were intended firstly, to act as catalysts for dialogue between the languages of pilgrimage in their many forms, whether theological, philosophical, poetic or pragmatically driven; and secondly, to complement the very important collection of early church relics and sculptures on show in Govan Old Church.   

While pilgrimage may be defined as a mode of journeying towards a highly significant focus or goal – a shrine or other sacred place – in its broadest sense, it is also a journey undertaken for reasons of curiosity or as a matter of sentiment. What also characterises pilgrimage is the form and effect of the journey, which often takes the traveller or pilgrim out of their conventional and habit world into a kind of liminality, or in-between place, that leads to a transformative state.

The exhibition and conference aimed to bring into focus many of the ways in which pilgrimage is transmitted, shared or remembered; historically within the church and more recently in the secular West.

Exhibiting artists are:  Sara Alonso, Susan Brind & Jim Harold, Conor Cook & Joanna Peace, Jasper Coppes, Victoria Evans, Cristina Garriga, Birthe Jorgensen and Emil Lillo (staff and alumni from Glasgow School of Art’s M Litt Fine Art Practice course).

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Pilgrims and Pilgrimages was made possible by the financial support of Bishop Gregor Duncan and the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway, and Literature and Theology (Oxford University Press). Thanks also go to Professor Stephen Driscoll, the Govan Heritage Trust, and the volunteers at Govan Old Church.

It Takes a Year to Walk Around the Sun was developed with the support of Hospitalfield Arts Interdisciplinary Residency, Arbroath, and Snehta Residency, Athens. Photos: Pablo Llopis

Video Installation for Transmission Gallery group show, November 2017. 2' 37" Continuous loop (no audio) on inverted Red HP Pavilion Laptop.

Two pairs of legs navigate a shifting grid-mapped terrain. Whether appearing to compete for territory, or collaborating in a mysterious silent dance, the ground beneath their feet is uncertain and changeable.

This solo installation, as part of three person show, was the result of a two month research residency at SNEHTA, Athens, Greece. The installation explores the tensions between lived experiences of time, place and movement and their abstract representation through measurement and mapping.

The title is a quote from Carlo Rovelli, renowned quantum physicist, referring to a view of physical reality based on 'events' occurring through interactions, rather than on objects that can be observed and described in isolation from each other.

Performative work over 365 days from Midsummer 2016 to Midsummer 2017, documented daily by videos on Instagram account IWalkAroundTheSun

An 11' 39" continuously looping edited version of the project, with immersive audio, featured in the installation A Pen Is An Object A Kiss Is An Event, Athens, 2017. The video was projected as a floor piece with surround sound. Its rythmic iterations expose overlaps and slippages in the way we experience time and its immersive form encourages a mimetic, somatic response in the viewer.

Video with audio 2’30” Screenings: Transmision Gallery, Glasgow 2016; The Newbridge project, Newcastle 2017.

Original footage adapted from Danse Serpentine, the Lumière Brothers, hand-painted one reel film, 1899, filmed at Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid 2016. Vocal, Sara Alonso-Martínez, recorded at Santervás de Campos and remixed by Victoria Evans, 2016.

The footage was recorded as part of a 500 mile walk across Spain, beginning in Madrid. One of the stops along the way was Santervás de Campos, where the vocal recording was made in the house of Juan Ponce de León, a 16th Century Conquistador who is named as the 'discover' of Florida.

The digital manipulation and editing of the original  frenetic one reel performance allude to invisible histories and the vulnerability and partiality of the historical record. 

NB: The 'unknown' dancer in the famous Lumière brothers reel is often mis-identified as Loie Fuller who originated the dance, but is more likely to have been pioneering figure of US contemporary dance, Papinta who's interpretation of Loie Fuller's dance  was markedly different in style.  

Video animation, 1' looped, rear projection into paper cube, 2016. Audio: remix of Nasa's 'Sounds of the Solar System' and Else Marie Pade's 'Syv Cirkler' (Seven Circles). Transmission Gallery, July 2016

Else Marie Pade (1924-2016) was a Danish pioneer of electronic music. Syv Cirkler (Seven Circles) was inspired by a visit to Brussels' world's fair in 1958, where she encountered a multimedia planetarium. 

In this contemporary tribute, her prophetic imagining of the 'sounds' of the solar system is combined with radio waves picked up by Nasa and converted to audio. 

The video is a stop-frame animation of eight paper cubes proportioned in a Fibonacci sequence, a geometrical equation that here makes visual reference to the mathematical patterns we use in both music and physics. The ninth 'circle' refers to the cube within which the video is being projected.

Card, lights, shop window. 2016

Solo show for 24 Hour Window, Glasgow, curated by Nicola Atkinson and Caspar J Wilson.

Sculptural installation looking at the relationship between the fibonacci sequence, a mathematical formula, and the naturally occurring spiral shape found in nautilus shells and galaxies that the formula describes.

'The smooth and the striated' refers to the philosophical concepts of amorphous (nomadic) and bounded (state) space, as explored by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their book A Thousand Plateaus.