interview by Robert Ayers
Robert Ayers: Ray, one of the things that's always fascinated me about your work is that there's always been this interest in somewhat out of date technology, both musical and mechanical. Where does that come from?
Ray Lee: Well, part of what I am trying to express comes out of a philosophical approach to technology, one which I share with my friend and colleague Harry Dawes, with whom I worked as Lee and Dawes, that technology is not fully utilised before it is discarded and superseded by the next 'new' thing. Of course in reality I use 'old' technology for a variety of reasons. I can afford it, and I can also take it apart and try and understand it. Through this process I can start to make it do what I want it to do. It also has cultural references, it has an aesthetic, it evokes a sense of nostalgia - a sense of not being quite of this time, but being in some way out of this time. In Lee and Dawes we talked about the technology of the car boot sale, about a pyramid or volcano of technology, with the newest thing being expelled from the mouth of the volcano and gradually adding to the vast clutter of discarded junk at the bottom of the pile. We saw ourselves as picking through this pile at the bottom of the technological volcano. In fact one of the pleasures in making new work was derived from reusing some old piece of gear that, with a wing and a prayer, might keep working long enough to last to the end of the tour. We also talked about our great distrust in science and scientists and the way in which new discoveries in science were affected as much by fashion as fact. The Ether, which was a word that we used as the title of one of our Lee and Dawes shows, was a metaphor for the nature of scientific inquiry. Pre-Einstein, the Ether was a required part of physical law. Then Ether was 'proven' not to exist. Einstein developed a theory that did not require the Ether, and the Ether was abandoned. Now Einstein is being reevaluated and the Ether may make a come back. Lee and Dawes were the champions of the Ether. We liked to question scientific orthodoxies. The Big Bang didn't happen. Apollo 11 did not land on the moon. What is accepted as gospel today becomes unfashionable tomorrow, a little like technology.
And how has that changed since you've stopped working with Harry?
Since Lee and Dawes, I have been less interested in reusing objects than in reconfiguring them, reconstructing the technology in a more - for want of a better word - sculptural form. For example, bits of an old army surplus metal detector are incorporated into a sound machine whose pitch changes as it detects metal. I want to make things, animated things that make a sound, because as an artist the process of making and using these devices is where the real art is for me.
How deliberately is this an ironic interest in abandoned technology, given that many of your contemporaries are working with digital and wireless technology?
It's not a self-conscious irony. Perhaps at times a little wilful. I'm not against digital technology per se and I'm certainly not against wireless technology. I've been using radios and radio waves in my work for the last eighteen years. In fact, if my work is about anything it's about exploring my own fascination with invisible forces such as magnetism and radio waves. The trouble is we don't tend to question the use and profligacy of technology enough in everyday life, let alone in art works. The use of some new-fangled technology is not enough in itself. We already have more technology than we can use. We have to ask why this technology makes the work better.
So, what is it that you find so fascinating about invisible forces like magnetism and electricity?
I've had this preoccupation with invisible forces since my college work in the very early nineteen eighties, when I was burying walkie-talkies in piles of earth, and it continues right up to my current work where I'm seeking to make the existence of this invisible world concrete through using the Theremin.
In fact there are a lot of reasons why I am deeply fascinated by invisible forces. Some are to do with a kind of childlike wonder. How does a radio work? How do TV signals travel through the atmosphere? Why are magnets magnetic? I love this idea of influence from a distance. Magnetism is a physical property that has physical laws to explain it (but that don't really tell me why) and magnetism surrounds us. We can make magnets by passing an electric current through a wire wrapped around a piece of metal. If you hit a nail with a hammer in the direction of north the nail becomes a temporary magnet. In the last house I lived in I was perturbed to find that all the nails in the floorboards were magnetic enough to influence a compass placed over them. The house, which faced north, had become magnetic. Then you get into electro-magnetic radiation and you discover that, low and behold, everything is part of this electro-magnetic spectrum which goes from cosmic rays through x-rays and visible light to radio waves. To me there is a magical and mysterious quality to magnets. We use them to alleviate rheumatism, to stop water pipes furring up, to improve the flow of fuel in engines, to cure back pain, as well as to levitate trains and take pictures of the insides of our bodies. Right from ancient times magnets have had a mystical, alchemical property. In the eighteenth century, Franz Mesmer was practising magnetic cures before he became known as a mesmeriser. Yet we seem to have retained this 'primitive', almost unscientific notion of magnetic cures. If magnets do work maybe we can influence people with powerful magnets, and if we ate enough magnets would we have a magnetic personality?
And, like you've said, your preferred instrument, the Theremin, that's dependent upon magnetism, isn't it?
Yes. The Theremin works because of the electro-magnetic field it emits. The performer enters this area of influence, breaking into the field which detects and responds to the capacitance of the performer's body. The performer becomes part of the field and the delicate movements of the performer's fingers, hands, and arms of the otherwise determinedly static performer control tiny fluctuations in this Ether, this magic circle of radiation, and consequently control the action of the instrument with no visible contact.
But, despite this interest in outmoded technology that we've just been talking about, you're now working with a digital Theremin, aren't you?
Yes, the MIDI Theremin is a good example of a kind of digital technology that I use. The 'digitalness' of it means that the hands-free Theremin performance can be used to trigger any other digital device including samplers. What I am currently researching is using the digital data to trigger relays which will turn on and off any electrical device - motors and lights etc. - which will turn the Theremin performer into a kind of invisible crane driver.
So, you're perfectly content to work with contemporary technology when it's appropriate?
It's not whether things are 'digital' or not that is the problem for me. It's the association of digital with inaccessible, hidden technology that is often clothed in neutral black boxes or in computers, only really accessible to programmers. What we end up with is the result of someone else's programming skills. I want to take technology apart, to find out how it works and to reconfigure it to make it do what I want it to do. I can't do that with numbers. I tend to think that progress in 'new' technology is more driven by the desire for profit than the creative need. A good example is something like the Moog Synthesiser, a classic of its time, where all the sounds are created by passing voltages through electronic components. You manipulate these voltages and hear the resulting shifts in sound by turning dials. It never sounds exactly the same twice. All these analogue sounds can now be made by a computer programme, but it doesn't have the same physical, tactile, or philosophical appeal to me. There are some great easy-to-use digital synthesis programme available for PCs, but the trouble is I don't like PCs. Computers are ugly and boring in a live context. It is the live context the really interests me because of course computers come into their own when you make recorded pieces. The physical presence of the Moog is part of its attraction as well as the unique sound quality it produces.
And these are precisely the concerns that inform your current piece, Spin, aren't they?
In Spin this preoccupation becomes visible in the extended set of instruments and sound machines that the Theremin accompanies: the metal plate upon which tin tacks dance as if controlled by invisible hands; the movements of the giraffe-like machines which oscillate to and fro guiding a metal detector, which itself generates an electro-magnetic field to detect metal objects around it and makes this detection evident by producing a pitched noise which changes as it encounters metal. I like this idea of the sounds becoming the evidence for an invisible yet physical force. You know, people claim that they are being controlled by radios, that they have radios in their teeth, that radio waves are harmful. Clearly mobile phones emit dangerous microwave radiation. So what do we do? We get everyone to buy one and fill the air with microwaves. I can feel it sometimes, and I know other people can. It's frightening, but true. The world is no longer the same. We are 'connected', 'in touch', and becoming subsumed into a sub-human hive where all sense of singularity or aloneness are lost. Or are we - as I have thought for some time - just hunter-gatherers with stone age minds, gone domestic - engorged with fat rich foods, and gathering technologies instead of food. Or did we really come from Mars all along?
Do you think we came from Mars?
Well, Mars makes me think about flying saucers. It seems to me that we are encouraged to believe in UFOs because of our desire to attain a kind of utopian techno-civilisation. It's obvious that if UFOs exist then other life forms have already achieved this kind of civilisation and that becomes a justification for ignoring what we are doing to the planet, and rushing headlong towards techno-heaven. As a race, the Western Capitalist race, we look outwards to colonise - if not other countries, then other worlds. UFOs reinforce our desire to send people into space, to explore new worlds and boldly go …What we don't seem to consider is the devastating unsustainable effect that such technological saturation is having and will have. I personally doubt that UFOs exist. Humans see things and interpret them according to the cultural patterns of the time. In the nineteen fifties, flying saucers were current. In medieval times angels and devils were. I am interested in the way that medieval thought and philosophy began to change with Newton, Descartes, Locke and Bacon. Theirs was a philosophy and a science that interpreted existence in mechanical terms, and thus underpinned the industrial revolution. I see this as a train of thought that propels us to the moon and makes us want to put a greenhouse on Mars. I plan to build a wooden flying saucer, life-size, using the ship building techniques of the eighteenth century …But you didn't ask me that. Magnetism is synonymous with magic. I don't understand why it works no matter how many times someone patiently explains it to me.
So, what is the psychological tenor that you want this work to achieve? Just thinking back to when you were working as Lee and Dawes, I remember someone commenting that you and Harry were "a kind of musical Penn and Teller". How important was it that those shows were funny? Do you think of the current work as 'funny'?
Lee and Dawes' aims for making and showing work were different to the aims for my current work. Lee and Dawes set out to make a kind of theatre/music performance that was ours and to get paid for doing it. The touring theatre circuit was the context we chose to realise this as we had for several years prior to Lee and Dawes been working as composer/musicians with Motionhouse Dance Company, so we had built up a knowledge of the touring circuit. While there are few fortunes to be made on the small scale theatre circuit it did give us the opportunity to raise money to make the shows and sell tours. Making the work accessible was a key part of this. Stylistically, we were making Live Art with a slightly hammed up delivery, but we achieved a wider appeal which took us out of the Live Art ghetto through the absurdity of the images we set out to create using obscure instruments and devices, the theatrical poses and quirky poetry, coupled with the often beautiful Super 8 films made by Fran Boyle. You didn't need to understand the syntax of Live Art to appreciate Lee and Dawes, and if you laughed all the better. While this approach definitely sold shows and attracted audiences, it didn't cut much ice with the cultural bigwigs at the posher venues, like the ICA, or the Arnolfini, or CCA, where we didn't get a look in. Lee and Dawes really had something unique. The work was funny and accessible, and was rich with ideas and images, magic, illusion and celluloid theatre. It dealt with the unknown effects of science and technology in a way that I don't see being repeated anywhere else. But we couldn't sustain it for more than its five year life.
And how does that contrast with what's going on in Spin?
My work has developed through Lee and Dawes into pieces like Swing, which I made in 199?, and this new work Spin. The use of sound as the primary function of the work allows to me to express a more poetic quality. The experience for an audience of a piece like Swing, for example, with its rows of loudspeakers swinging above their heads, and all emitting a complex sonic texture of shifting electronic drones, isn't intended to make the audience get any absolute meaning. Ideally, I'd rather give them a potentially powerful experience which might provoke a sense of wonder or awe. Spin is not yet as distinct a piece as Swing, but I'm hoping that it will develop into something like Swing, with large numbers of rotating sirens giving an extraordinary sonic texture and visual presence.
So, I don't think that Swing or Spin are particularly funny. They're not supposed to be funny. I want a simpler more neutral mode of delivering the work to an audience where more focus is on the work and less is on the performer. Regardless of whether or not its funny or entertaining, I do want them to be a spectacle, something magical and unrepeatable, that an audience will remember. Also I want them to include ideas that are more challenging and potentially difficult for an audience. Compositional processes that require duration to achieve a certain effect are, for example, difficult to do if you're constantly trying to entertain the audience. That said, laughter is a great response. I often laugh when something appeals to me, even if it's not funny.
(This conversation was conducted by email in January 2001. It was subsequently edited by Robert Ayers and Ray Lee. A shorter version was published as Invisible Forces-Listening to Ray Lee / far Ahead Publications/isbn 1-84233-041-1………………..)
