Compose | Decompose by Compose | Decompose

COMPOSE | DECOMPOSE is a conversation between artist Eleanor Annand and Make Noise, maker of modular synthesizers.

https://penland.org/gallery/2019-horn-gallery_conversation-compose-decompose/

This album of the same name is recordings of the performances by Walker Farrell, Meg Mulhearn, and Jake Pugh, at the opening of Compose|Decompose at Penland Gallery on March 30, 2019, paired with brand new artwork by Eleanor Annand in a physical edition of 100 copies.


Eleanor Annand:

I rely on the premise that my artwork has the ability to evoke a visceral and direct response from my viewer. In my work, I bring a sensitivity to materials, form, and composition to incite emotions that appeal to innate proclivities for order and rhythm. Seeking both tension and balance, I utilize intuitive and analytical processes that push and pull off of one another.

The work in Compose | Decompose plays with disruption, entropy, light, and shadow. Embracing a lack of permanence, I worked primarily with cardboard and recycled paper scraps to create modular units that can be arranged in a myriad of ways. Compose, decompose, compose, decompose, is a cycle in my process that mimics cycles of life and which I am exploring further in the impermanence of my materials.

Time is unyielding. It is beauty and heartbreak simultaneously.



Walker Farrell:

My practice with modular synthesizers is fundamentally improvisatory, but I typically do start from some idea that gives a piece its identity. I prepared this particular piece with the visual and theoretical elements of Ele’s installation in mind. The “outer” sections (beginning and end) use a recording of an earlier performance of mine as source material. I have long considered recording to be a sort of embalming, and this performance was meant to be a decomposition or compost of this old recording.

The middle section is a structured improvisation based around echoes of a melody heard in a story from my youth. An ancient civilization is built on islands in the sky, where its privileged citizens spend most of their time asleep, waking up only to comment on how wonderful their world is. Far below, the masses huddle frozen in an unrelenting climate. The leaders of the sky civilization pray to Mammon and awake ancient forces that end up destroying the worlds of rich and poor alike. The heroes of the story are unable to put a stop to this catastrophe. As Ele wrote: “Time is unyielding. It is beauty and heartbreak simultaneously.”


Meg Mulhearn:

There are infinite ways to combine the notes of a scale; there are infinite ways to blend textures in the physical world. The choices artists make in how we move air around, events ordered, elements strung together and layered, and what moves us in moments of creation are alive, arresting and untranslatable.


Jake Pugh:

Temporary music from the past preserved in Youtube and nested in the memory of people who watched a lot of TV growing up. Have you ever tried ~Shazaming~ hold music? I had no idea Care Bears had been around since 1985. Yes, 7UP (the soda) does have a theme song. I haven't really watched TV in a while, but I do remember what Reese's Puffs sounded like and it has a lot of re-listening value. I can also remember what it sounds like to imagine the ease of using a new version of Windows.

Wake up Zhu Zhu pets!
Zhu Zhu pets go here and there
Zhu Zhu pets go every where.
There's a big world to explore
and fun through every door.
Pipsqueak loves the hamster wheel
change their world its no big deal
you will love your zhu zhu pets
cuz they're so real with out the mess!

COMPOSE | DECOMPOSE is a conversation between artist Eleanor Annand and Make Noise, maker of modular synthesizers.

artist photo by Peter Speer

penland.org
Bandcamp
Meg Mulhearn
Walker Farrell
makenoisemusic.com