As promised a few posts back, here is some information on the photographer Lesley Flower and  the project we are working on… as I may have mentioned, Lesley has had an interest in photography from a very young age and also studied Fine Art Photography at university.  Take a look at some of her work at: www.LesleyFlower.co.uk.

As I’m sure you will see from her website, Lesley’s photographs ooze atmosphere and the themes that she uses  practically climb out of the picture and envelope you.  At the root, on a basic level, her current work concerns  calmness, particularly that to do with nature.  Being a person that finds an affinity with the outdoors life, this all comes very naturally to her and because of this, the atmospheres that she creates are very vivid.  It is this vividness that draws me in to her work and this is all very relevant to me because this enveloping atmoshere is something that I am aiming towards musically (which is by no means accomplished yet!).  As with Lesley, I believe this sense of calm is very important in modern society.  Many, many people forget how to relax and forget that the causes of stress are very rarely a life or death situation!  It may be idealistic but I believe that if people paid more attention to this many of the world’s problems might be more easily sorted due to the dissipation of confrontation stress causes.  Abstract (ie. effectively imaginary) concepts  bring about these stresses and ironically enough, these imaginary ideas are actually what causes physical conflict and strife.  Think about all of the murders that have been committed due to pride and perceived pressure.

For a while now, Lesley and I have been talking about a possible project collaboration bringing together our ideals into an audio-visual experience, our interest in dreamy atmospheres and a need to envelope the viewer/listener sensually and conceptually being a main starting-point.  With my current research into sound design and sound as art, this project is proving very interesting for me and very fruitful for my musical ideas as well as honing my more conceptual goals too (as I have been ranting about in previous posts).

The next step for us is to show a few friends what we have come up with so far and to see what reactions we get…  We need to see if our work is getting the desired effect, and if it isn’t we will look at how we can refine what we have to get to the very essence of what we want to say.  I’ll keep you all updated on how it goes!

Thanks for reading.