Helen Davey Cox

The Art 
 

ELELEL   by Jack Fisher 
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Jack Fisher writes….

ELELEL is part of my abstract contexts portfolio and follows a process I am developing as an exercise in high abstraction. The process begins with a text and design layer that reflects moods and thoughts at the time. A second layer ignores the first layer except for design cues and semiotic suggestions. All of this takes place disregarding any pictorial or representational possibilities, resulting in a composition with text and design. 
My third layer creates a series of delineations, black outlines, holding the composition together. these are definitions of non-objects since nothing is pictorial and the delineation defines whatever appears within its outline. I have a portfolio of such works. The final step is an expansion of the outlines until they become contexts, which is a more powerful definition, still surrounding non-objects. the process assures that any narrative is purely a function of suggestion and a play on the semiotics and composition itself, meant to stimulate the imagination and provoke articulation of purely abstract considerations.

detail from Jack Fisher’s ELELEL

My Music 

Following on from Jack’s process, I worked in layers, taking on the prominent shapes, dynamics, numeric and alphabetic symbols as the structural elements of my first layer. I took 9 as the uppermost measure of rhythm and used sixteenths as the division. You can hear these as repeated sequences of “dots” echoing the dots in Jack’s work. 

There are many sections in the music where 5, 6, 7 or 8 take charge of the time signature then move on. I used many mallets on different surfaces for these changing time signatures.