Open Studio

Open Studio is an artist-devised space in Tate Modern that offers families visiting the gallery an opportunity to interact, make, and experiment with materials, techniques and other aspects of artistic process. Open Studio was perhaps best understood as a piece of participatory art where the artist sets up the conditions of the work and these play out according to the interventions of visitors. In an evaluation document written at the end of 2012, I used the metaphor of the jigsaw to describe the dynamics at play within the project.

In the introduction to his novel, Life A User’s Manual, George Perec eulogises the designer of jigsaws. The jigsaw is a game for two players, he claims; one is the jigsaw maker, the other jigsaw puzzler:

‘Puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzle-maker has made before, every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries, and tries a second time, every blunder and insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated, and decided by the other.’

…

The jigsaw puzzle is initially a straightforward activity, the rules are clear, the component parts easy to manipulate: anyone can start playing with a jigsaw puzzle. The more selective and serious jigsaw puzzler begins with a handicap that most occasional puzzlers would never allow: they begin without knowing what image the puzzler has intended them to create. There is no bigger picture until the image begins to emerge from the correctly placed constituent pieces. The serious puzzler lets the puzzle-maker lead them down countless dead-ends and cul-de-sacs before they start to see the wood from the trees. Finally, the puzzler meets the puzzle- maker when the last pieces are placed and the Rockeby Venus, or Piccadilly Circus at night, or a Redwood forest, lie complete on the tabletop … Imagine a jigsaw that could represent any image the user wished for, yet still retaining the puzzling and struggle of the plain, old jigsaw Perec so adored. This is the artist’s challenge in Open Studio. (Scott, 2012e)

I wrote some preparatory ideas in early 2012 and I was initially very interested in creating an immersive and interactive sound installation that would be activated in different ways

by visitors. I wrote a piece of prose for a work completed in 2012, entitled The Sounds of Central Laeitana (see figure 6 for an image of the installation), that became a starting point for my ideas. The work was an imaginary album of historical field recordings constructed from contemporary recordings I made in Barcelona. The record featured the feverish sleeve-notes of an early (and fictional) field recordist, and explored the generative gap between sound and source afforded by the invention of sound recording technology:

So after sleeping, I forge the meaning. My eye maps the terrain; the village, the boats, the children playing, and it draws lines between cause and effect. But those sounds tilt the paper and the ink drips. See, the eye does not sleep, it is covered, but it remains fixed. The object remains. But listen, the sound tricks you, so the cat’s footsteps become murderous. Hermes plays his harp. The lullaby connects the dream to hearing. Sound is the wakeful eye dreaming. (Scott, 2012f)

Figure 6: Scott, D. (2012) The Sounds Of Central Laeitana I was interested in presenting visitors with work that played with the gap between the source of a sound, and how its sound is to listened to, heard or understood. I was actively exploring the strategy of ‘acousmatic’ listening, as proposed by Pierre Schaeffer in his work (Schaeffer, 1956/2012):

For Open Studio my intention is to create spaces occupied by dreaming objects. By this I mean material things; pens, paper, rubbish, wood, paint, that, when encouraged through gesture and touch, conjure up their oneiric aspect.

Such a sound can be perceived as something in itself, occupying its own space apart from the object. By taking the dreaming sound, and moving it across the space of the room, I hope to create ambiguous and fluid space in which children can gradually create their own modes of navigation and understanding. (Scott, 2012e)

There was an undoubtedly poetic aspect to my initial intentions, but with this ambition of ‘dreaming objects’ I also had a keen desire to pragmatically explore the listening present in the Open Studio encounter:

The act of making a sound presupposes a listener. Furthermore, the technique of the acousmatic, dream-sound allows the child making the sound to both listen to their own sound, and be aware of it being listened to by others. Hopefully, it engages children in an experience of being attentive, and attended to, through sound. The mode of listening is one of inclusion and belonging. This communicative aspect of sound is perhaps unique to the aural register.

Listening is a constant state of becoming; a straining for meaning. Certain listening experiences lead us to meaning, yet once meaning is grasped listening ceases. The intention for the sounds are the dreams of objects pieces is to create a space for listening without meaning. (ibid.)

The proposal was also drawing on the work on Jean Luc Nancy (discussed in the previous chapter) and his proposal that listening is a ‘straining towards meaning’ (Nancy, 2008, p.6).