Please join us to mark the opening of Temporal Fictions, a new installation by Wellington-based artists, Dugal McKinnon and Jim Murphy featuring kinetic sound sculptures, generative sound synthesis, 7-channel audio.
Through a set of 7 clock-like kinetic sculptures, created by Jim Murphy, Temporal Fictions measures time as “counted, measured, and subordinate to a linear order”, fabricating striated from smooth time – time as “pure intensity, directionless and unmeasured” (Delueze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Plateau 14). Each clock’s mechanism, which physicalize time’s passage by wrapping linear ramps into a disc, encourages a teleological reading of time, visual anticipation of successive chimes as the clock hammer is progressively lifted before its momentary strike. The installation’s clocks, however, are not synchronized, and the result of this is the stochastic striation of time – floating rhythms – in which temporal events unpredictably compress and expand, cluster in bursts, settle into cycles, articulate aperiodic textures. These in turn create audible friction with the clock’s linear visual array, a misalignment that faces clock time against time itself.
And though not a piece of music or a performance in any conventional sense, Temporal Fictions uses these kinetic and visual qualities to musically articulate time: “In making music, we make time audible, and we ‘explain’ our experience of life” (Brubaker, “Time is Time”). It is the installation’s soundscape, created by Dugal McKinnon, that creates the installation’s eponymous temporal fictions as these emerge from the interaction of the clocks, making audible manifold temporalities: telos and suspension, cyclicity and aperiodicity, domesticated and unbroken rhythms, clocks and clouds of time, pulsing and colliding. The burnished and metallic materiality of the clocks, as well as their steely inharmonicity, are the alchemical elements used in transforming the physical into the sonic. Spectral, gestural and textural couplings emerge from the resonant matter of Temporal Fictions, generating a temporary chronal microcosm within the Audio Foundation gallery.
Opens: Thursday 13 November, 5.30pm, with refreshments by Liberty Breweries & Decibel Wines
Hours: 12 – 4pm, Wednesday – Saturday
Closes: Saturday 6 December
Special event: Friday 14 November, 8pm
During their time in Auckland, Jim Murphy and Dugal McKinnon will be accompanied by New Zealand’s only IKO Speaker. Using wall and ceiling reflections this icosahedral speaker developed by Sonible in partnership with IEM, surrounds listeners in the media and artistic event. For this special concert, the IKO Speaker will be used by both Dugal and Ben Leonard, who will present his piece, Breathwork, composed while Sound Artist in Residence at Wellington’s Toi Pōenke Arts Centre. Complimenting these pieces, Jim Murphy and Bridget Johnson will present a performance as part of their ongoing Prepared Spaces series, and Nathan Carter will perform using his cutting-edge granular synthesizers.
Tickets available from undertheradar.co.nz
More info: HERE
Special event: Saturday 15 November, 1 – 3pm
Join Jim and Dugal for an artist talk exploring the themes and materials used in their installation, Temporal Fictions.
More info: here
Jim Murphy is a sculptor of kinetic sound artworks. A lecturer in Sonic Arts and Music Technology at Te Kōki—New Zealand School of Music, Jim’s recent works focus on mechanical expressions of gesture and sonority. Originally from New Mexico, Jim studied at California Institute of the Arts, moving to Wellington to complete a PhD in Sonic Arts and Engineering with a thesis exploring expressivity in mechatronic musical instruments. In 2020, Jim founded Ensemble Mechatronic, a collective of sound artists who explore mechanical sonic artmaking. He has recently exhibited works at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery. Follow Jim on Instagram at @ensemble_mechatronic.
Dugal McKinnon is a composer and sound artist whose practice encompasses electronic, acoustic, visual and textual media, often intersecting these. His recent output includes To Think of Atoms, for icosahedral loudspeaker and 40-channel sound system, for Sonorities Festival (Belfast), and Path 99, a collaborative audiovisual project (for surround sound and full-dome planetarium projection), commissioned by the NZ International Film Festival. Dugal established the Sonic Arts programme (now Digital Music and Audio Production) at Te Kōki—New Zealand School of Music, where he teaches electronic music and sound studies, and co-directs the Lilburn Studios for Electronic Music. Follow Dugal on Instagram at @dugalmck.
Jim and Dugal’s previous collaborations include Lost Oscillations, a public sound installation (created with Mo Zareei) for the Audacious Festival of Sonic Art (2015, Christchurch, NZ), and Dugal’s generative performance created in response to Jim’s Machine Song: Gesture 3 exhibited at Te Pātaka Toi (July-Sept 2024, Wellington, NZ).