The DESTROY project is an auto-destructive piece combining music, visual effects and a chemical reaction to evoke how man has suffered throughout history due to age, illness, madness and other forms of gradual degradation.
The final piece is a combination of three different forms of destruction, (physical, visual and audial), that interconnect to form a quixotic display of a dying man. The narrative spans from health - to illness - to death, and then progresses into a visual representation of the mystery of what proceeds from death.
I began by exploring synthetic materials that react with each other in a manner that resembles bodily decay. I found that styrofoam dissolves when combined with organic solvents, resembling a time-lapse of weathering limestone due to acid rain. With this I created an installation of a male polystyrene head set on a rotating display disk and continually sprayed it with acetone until the entire structure had dissolved into liquid.
I documented this process and created a short video stylised with the same narrative, editing the visuals so that they to underwent a process of destruction that match this ‘decaying man installation’, starting with literal visualisation and then gradually degrading into abstract. I set this video to a piece of music that experiments with forms of audial distortion, so that both the video and the music are both gradually destroyed with the polystyrene head.
The process of destruction is therefore both physical and digital, and experienced through the subject matter, the visuals and the music, all as one.
As the video distorts completely into the abstract we reach the point of ‘death’, and then begins a new direction of exploring what can be formed, or rather re-born, from this destructive process as you begin to discover new textural shapes and perspectives.
This macabre representation now shifts towards a positive conclusion. What can be gained from destruction, characterising pain and decay as a tool for potential enlightenment in an attempt to break down the barrier between body and mind.
Companies
London College of Communication, UAL
- Education & Research