First Person: Drawing at a Gig

Sound has always made imagery in my head, and I've always drawn to music – so when local electronic promoters Deep Hedonia organised and staged a collaboration with Drawing Paper (a free newspaper devoted to the showcasing of drawing, co-ordinated by myself and Mike Carney) and artists from The Royal Standard, it was always going to be an exciting experiment.

We generated live visuals in sync to performances by Liverpool producers Bantam Lions and Isocore, and Japan's NHK'Koyxen, providing a pulsating and varied kaleidoscopic adventure that was reminiscent of futuristic/constructivist film pioneers Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger. The artists worked feverishly on their drawings, with cameras capturing the collisions between line, colour and tone by mixing two live drawing experiments at once, initially as a decidedly analogue backdrop to the experimental techno of the two Liverpool producers – but by the time NHK'Koyxen took the stage, all caution was left behind as we exploited the heady mix of filmed drawings and objects (I recall a nodding rabbit!), and invoked a few 'ghosts in the machine' from amazing video feedback. The live, improvisational drawing turned out be an intuitive expression of the music, and a stubbornly non-digital 'kitchen sink' production. For me, it was a happy return to the tactile and hand-made, with drawing and lighting contraptions created from mirror tiles, bicycle lamps, an old hi-fi turntable and LED light sticks – with only an archaic video mixer to make transitions a little smoother.

I'm keen to explore how rhythmic music can offer a kind of graphic 'dance' – with marks and lines being produced as a result of gestures and movements that leave a trace on paper or surface. I recall hearing Brian Eno speak about ambient music and sound sculpture at a conference organised by the International Symposium on Electronic Art some years ago in Liverpool. His notion of sound providing a space that is free from a specific 'voice' or narrative – a space in which you make your own journey or draw your own musical conclusions – opened the door for me to consider drawing in this way. So for me, this event was about abstraction, using gestural drawing to provide a space for sound to exist in, and for you to inhabit. Deep Hedonia and Drawing Paper are planning more collaborative events that explore drawing and music, and I can't wait.