Nic Sandiland
Trip Hazard
20th September - 2nd November 2014
“Over the past 25 years I have been drawn to what the American choreographer, Yvonne Rainer termed pedestrian choreography; the everyday movement as material for choreographic presentation. In my work I am interested in engaging the everyday actions of the viewer in a choreographic context often employing interactive technology to do this. Recently I have drawn on cinematic technologies, such as slow motion and moving camera mechanisms as ways to elevate the mundane and often overlooked choreography of everyday life. My intention is always to shift the viewer’s focus back to his or her own body whilst at the same time acknowledging the movement presented. One could perhaps call this a duet between the viewer and the viewed. Trip Hazard at the m2 gallery represents a more traditional form of interaction.
Having spent a number of years looking at continuous connections between the viewer and mediated movement, I decided to revisit the more commonplace interaction of discrete cause and effect; where a particular action in the physical world might trigger a pre-set event in a digital space. This new direction was to some degree influenced through my involvement with Gary Steven’s Wake Up and Hide (Matt’s Gallery 2007): a video installation linking to the unintentional sounds of the gallery visitors to reactions contained within a series of video clips. Like Wake Up and Hide, Trip Hazard also looks at the inadvertent actions of the general public but concentrates on a proposed transfer of momentum between physical environment and digital space.
Part one-liner gag, part public intervention, Trip Hazard aims to form a physical and immediate bridge between everyday inadvertent actions in public spaces and the potentially catastrophic consequences such actions could have.”
Nic Sandiland is a UK based artist whose work focuses on choreography through the areas of installation, performance and film. He originally trained as an electronics engineer before studying dance and performance in the late 80s.
His film work has been shown worldwide and has been regularly broadcast on UK TV (Channel 4). His work has been commissioned by such organisations as: the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Arts Centre, Sadler’s Wells Theatre and Artsdepot and he is a regular collaborator with choreographers Yael Flexer and Rosemary Lee. He has also worked as an interactive technology designer with companies such as Station House Opera and artists Gary Stevens and Imogen Stidworthy.
Nic has taught workshops on digital technology and dance around the World including: Bangalore, India and Seoul, South Korea. He also taught video production for 10 years at London Contemporary Dance School (MA dance for camera) and is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Middlesex University.
