Threshold (2016) - Ben Denham

This show at 55 Sydenham Rd was joint effort between myself Paul Greedy and Sean O’Connell. It was really great working with Sean and Paul on this and I think we ended up creating something together that was a little more than the sum of its parts.

My work for this show was created by burning paper directly with a laser. The paper is attached to a motor that spins it at a variety of speeds. The laser tracks slowly across the spinning paper to create the spiral form. You can see the process that produced these works in the video Grasping Light. The patterns that you see in the smaller works are produced by programing acceleration and deceleration into the rotation of the paper. The patterns emerge at certain speeds and are not something that I’m controlling directly. Its more about dialing in on particular speeds where I find something interesting happening. The laser dot has to be slightly out of focus for these patterns to emerge. I use simple code to program the speed variations. Each new drawing involves slight tweaks to the code that I’ve used to create the previous drawings.

Sean’s work for this show was a bunch of light boxes and prints that he created by placing objects on various types of film and blasting them with high voltage electricity. Here are a few shots of Sean’s light boxes

Sean O’connell circular edges – 29 monochrome and colour negatives and slides, backlit – various dimensions – 2016 – installation view

Paul’s work was this resonating instrument/installation. He pumped tones into the wires that were then amplified and fed back into the space. The copper pipe acted as a resonator. The volume rose and fell in a beautiful and unpredictable way.