Signal Chain — Episode 10
Signal Chain — Episode 10
Welcome to the tenth and final episode in Season One of Signal Chain. This pop-up newsletter is a creative collaboration between generative musician Duncan Geere and photographer Oliver Holms.
We’re taking turns to send new work to each other. Each new piece is inspired by the piece before. We’re building a chain of influence together and you’re along for the ride. New instalments are released on the 1st and 15th of every month, and you can unsubscribe at any time using the link in the footer.
::SC10::
Hi Duncan,
So this is it — the final episode of Season One of Signal Chain. I’m sad that this project is coming to an end, but I’m proud of the thing we made. Also, I’m grateful for the way it’s shaped my thinking about creative collaboration. The rhythm has been just right — two weeks on, two weeks off. It’s enough time to make something without feeling hurried, but enough pressure to make sure it gets done.
Also, a big benefit of working with someone else is that my creative process is freed from ‘blank page syndrome’. Instead of scanning my pictures looking for ‘the best one’, whatever that means, I just listen to your track and try to find an image that resonates with it. It’s still a tricky choice, but the constraint means I’m starting the hunt with a direction and a bit of momentum.
In your track, I hear something simple and elegant being distorted and deconstructed to a point of near abstraction. I chose this image as it’s the photographic equivalent of that process of dissolution. I love sharp lenses and high resolution sensors, but often I feel an urge to fight against their clinical rendering. I want to prioritise form over detail, massing volumes like a painter. Sometimes, to enhance mood, it helps to reduce clarity, so I work to break down the sharpness and blur the edges. I like to shoot through wet, fogged or scratched glass and watch the light bloom and outlines bleed.
This image depicts a sunset; a gateway in the daily cycle of waxing and waning light that is so important to a photographer. I shot it through the condensation that had formed on the glass of my mum’s conservatory, surrounded by family members gathered after my gran’s memorial service. We were remembering the end of another, much longer cycle.
As I get older I’ve become more aware of the cycles that we’re embedded within: days and nights, lunar phases, seasons, years, lifetimes. I’ve grown to appreciate and be comforted by this constant flux that renders everything anew, yet shot through with echoes of the past. As the first season of Signal Chain draws to a close, I’m looking at the new leaves on the silver birch outside my kitchen window and wondering what the new season will bring.
– Oliver