Rayne – One Year On

Posted on | June 10, 2011 |

In June 2010 on a rainy day, I sat at my window and came up with the very first fledgling idea that would eventually become my biggest project to date; Rayne. Now one year on from that day I can look back over how far it has come, and most importantly where its headed in the future.

The last few months have been an absolute triumph. Since the completion of the first fully functional prototype of Rayne early this year I have created numerous photographic prints of Raynes oil artwork, as well as painting prints created by Rayne and also performed Raynes debut live show last month. A lot of work went into public tests of it in both an installation and performance environment from which I learned a lot. A few issues began to appear which made me to question ‘How could I successfully and clearly deliver Rayne to an audience?’

In its current design and state, Rayne wasn’t working reliably as a lucid and coherent installation. This was something I expected after the very first test of Rayne. Due to difficulty of set up and problems maintaining it over long periods of time, cracks began to appear at this stage for installation to become the form of delivery. Performance on the other hand seemed to be working a lot more clearly and interestingly and as I would be in complete control of if, a lot of the problems that arose as an installation were no longer a problem. By introducing a piano as the performance instrument, I was albe to control the oil droplets in Rayne in a polyphonic fashion rather than monophonic as originally planned with my first choice of instrument; the Flute. Chord patterns and intervals were now easily seen in the performance simply from the patterned spaces of the oil droplets which proved to work in a much more synaesthetic fashion as an audiovisual experience.

On Friday the 6th and Saturday the 7th of May 2011, Rayne was performed in CSM011 at the Riverfront, Newport. You can watch the video of Saturday nights performance below (or here).

Rayne has proven to be a wonderful and interesting piece of audiovisual art, sculpting sound paintings in oil on the surface of water that evolve over time with the sound and music that creates it. It makes interesting artwork which has been a wonderful element to this project, allowing me to document and display prints and paintings that have well and truly been painted directly by music itself. The future for Rayne involves further research into its development in order for it to work in more interesting and versatile environments including gallery spaces and installations. This will allow the public the opportunity to interact with it for themselves, moving it away from being a one-way piece of linear artwork and into the world of two-way interaction, letting the user explore both sound and colour in a simple, clear and most definitely beautiful experience indeed.

Peace.

- Leigh Davies