The sound before you make it

source: acmi

Dancing zombies come alive, igniting our eighties pop music nostalgia in The Sound Before You Make It. Sydney collaborative artists Jaki Middleton and David Lawrey are interested in cultural memory and the historically playful resonance of perception, illusion and representation. Traversing the visual and aural iconography of pop culture, their projects utilise a range of familiar objects but position them within a new context through sampling. Middleton and Lawrey demonstrate how sampling can be used to call up the personal memories that are attached to specific cultural objects, while also highlighting the dissonance of their sampled setting.

The kinetic installation, The Sound Before You Make It, was inspired by the nineteenth-century technology of the zoetrope and its ability to create the convincing illusion of three-dimensional animation, long before the advent of film and television.

In 1834, English inventor William George Horner announced a new optical illusion: the Daedaleum. Its name was taken from the figure of Daedalus in Greek mythology, the builder and sculptor said to have crafted the first humans and animals in motion. Marketed in 1867, the Daedaleum was re-named the zoetrope in England and America. The term ‘zoetrope’ is taken from the Greek words zoe (life) and trope (turn). This proto-animation device was also known by other popular names like the ‘wonder drum’ and the ‘wheel of life’.

Traditionally, the zoetrope consists of a simple drum with an open top, supported on a central axis. Hand-drawn picture strips of sequential images are inserted at the base of the drum. Slots are cut at equal distances around the outer surface of the drum, just above the picture strip. The drum is spun, creating the impression of movement when the viewer looks through the slits; the faster the drum moves, the smoother the effect of animated motion. By utilising ‘persistence of vision’, that is our eye’s natural ability to retain an image for a fraction of a second after it has gone, the zoetrope turned a series of still images into continuous movement, making it crucial to the development of animation.

With cheeky historical abandon, Middleton and Lawrey have re-created the zoetrope’s sequential movement of animated figures, using three-dimensional figures and strobe lighting in place of the traditional two-dimensional images and drum. Remixing the zombie choreography from Michael Jackson’s special effects laden Thriller music video with nineteenth-century animation techniques, The Sound Before You Make It collides moving image history with our own pop culture recollections, to the tune of an unforgettable beat.
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source: wayback

Remixing a scene from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, this work employs the technology of the zoetrope; animating three-dimensional figures via the sequencing of movement and a strobe light to create the illusion that the disk is stationary and the zombies are dancing.

David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton construct sculptural artworks that incorporate motion, optical phenomena and repetition. Appropriating iconic snippets of film, photography and history, the artists re-stage these fragments within sculptural installations in order to observe, breakdown and reconfigure familiar narratives.

Recent exhibitions include Living in the Ruins of the Twentieth Century at UTS Gallery, Sydney; The Hunt at Gallery 9, Sydney (both 2013);Time & Vision at the Bargehouse Gallery, London (2012), Otherworldly at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2011); New Acquisitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and Abandon Normal Devices at FACT, Liverpool, UK (both 2009). The artists have undertaken residencies in Paris, London, Los Angeles and New York.

David Lawrey completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney in 2003. Jaki Middleton completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours (2002) and a Master of Visual Arts (2008), both from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney.David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton have worked collaboratively since 2005 and are represented by Gallery 9, Sydney.
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source: dazeddigital

David Lawrey and Jaki Middleton have been collaborating since 2005, creating marvelous mini epic installations and sculptures that play with the familiar, yet draw on old cinematic traditions and crafts. It’s a bit like seeing pop culture through the eyes of a shadow puppet (if the play was written by Philip K Dick). Currently in Liverpool for Abandon Normal Devices – a festival of new cinema and digital culture – the duo are exhibiting a work called The Sound Before You Make It, that recreates a sample from Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance in an awesome three-dimensional stroboscopic animation.
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source: 18thstreet

David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton’s collaborative practice draws on popular visual culture, art history and cinematic traditions to create works that engage the viewer via optical phenomena, juxtaposition and repetition. Incorporating sculpture, photography, pre-cinematic optical devices and museum inspired displays, their works appropriate iconic snippets of film and video art; re-staging these fragments in new visual contexts in order to observe, break-down and reconfigure familiar narratives.

David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton have been working collaboratively since 2005 and are based in Sydney, Australia. Recent exhibitions include Abandon Normal Devices at FACT, Liverpool, UK and New Acquisitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.