Molly Macleod

[mollymacleodartist]

NEW RELEASE! 

My new EP Widows Peak is released today on CAMP Editions and is available for download. This collection of songs is the most honest and stripped back I've ever dared to be so please take a moment in a dark corner with some headphones to have a listen. I hope you find the tracks as cathartic to listen to as I did to create.

Download here: https://editions.campfr.com/release/6/molly-macleod-widows-peak

[mollymacleodartist]

Experimenting with different shapes to see how they alter the formation of the salt crystals and the pattern of the shadows. 

[mollymacleodartist]

I began experimenting with painting in the shadows every hour they are out in the sun, evaporating. A poetic way of tracking the process. 

[mollymacleodartist]

First experiments using black clay moulded on to beach pebbles, ink and seawater. 

[mollymacleodartist]

Finding myself on the Pembrokeshire coast for ‘Lockdown’ I decided to continue with my research into salt using the sea that conveniently surrounds me. Looking into different ways salt has been extracted from the sea, from stone basins carved into tidal volcanic rocks on Chinese islands, as in the image above, to redirecting the seawater in to flat tidal pans and letting the sun do the evaporating. I’m interested in how simple and non-invasive these ancient methods are compared to destructive actions like mining. People taking only what they need on a local scale, working in harmony with the tidal patterns and using energy that already exists via geothermal activity or sunlight evaporation.    

[mollymacleodartist]

Dirty Money @ TATE EXCHANGE 

As part of CSM’s Tate exchange takeover I invited members of the public to play with my interactive sound board, where coins were the sound triggers. Each coin triggered a mini soundscape using sounds created only with the coins themselves. 

I will now be culturing the bacteria from the coins and growing it in the lab as a living record of the participants who visited Tate exchange. A new collaborative piece of artwork will arise from this transfer of bacteria from over 300 people who interacted with the work. . 

[mollymacleodartist]

CERN

I spent a week at CERN in Switzerland collecting the sound of electromagnetic interference, speaking with physicists and collecting materials to work with from the bins. This will hopefully lead on to a piece of sound work and sculpture that will be exhibited soon at CERN. 

[mollymacleodartist]

EMERGENT

MA Art & Science open studio. I showed my work in progress for a few different projects. Along side visual documentation I included audio diaries and a recording of my voice I made using a piezoelectric crystal I grew myself. 

[mollymacleodartist]

More from Hacking Hearts. 

The week in the lab concluded with a symposium for which we created a performance piece. The audience were randomly issued with a square of material each. The distribution of the materials reflected the statistics of heart disease in the UK today. Some were thick, rigid and tough, others were more malleable and some were very thin and stretched easily. They represented how the thickness of the cell walls of a heart change depending on it’s state of health. 

The audience were asked to cover their fists with the material and open and close their hand, mimicking a heartbeat. As we hoped the audience began drifting in time with each other until they were all beating together in unison, just at the heart cells we had witnessed during our week of lab work had been doing.  

[mollymacleodartist]

Hacking Hearts

Spent a week in the lab with some amazing scientists all working at the cutting edge of cardiology. Here is a tiny cluster of heart cells in a petri dish beating together: 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Molly Macleod (@mollymacleodstudio) on Nov 9, 2019 at 9:44am PST

[mollymacleodartist]

Forced Connections 

I mapped my arm veins with a specialised torch then walked the paths of my veins on the moors. Tracked via GPS technology. I found myself creating new paths on the landscape, peering in on the well trodden existing paths as an outsider. 

This project came out of my first few weeks studying Art & Science MA at Central Saint Martins in London. 

[mollymacleodartist]

I spent May - September of 2019 working at CAMP,  hosting a series of five-day arts, music, writing and arts activist sessions in the French Pyrenees. Each session is run by an internationally acclaimed artist, they are intense creative flashpoints and unique experiences designed to change the lives of everybody involved.   www.campfr.com  

Highlights of my time at CAMP were: recording the dawn chorus with sound artist Chris Watson, doing artist Bill Drummonds Cake Walk around a tiny French village, Tim Shaws sound walk, Phill Niblock scaring the locals with his ear splitting performance, making cartoon strips with comedian Josie Long and learning the magic behind Sutu Eats Flies VR & AR experiences. 

[mollymacleodartist]

HYSTERIA

Group residency project for HYSTERIA in Porto, Portugal. The theme ‘Vocal Tract’ was explored and concluded in a public performance using only our voices in total darkness. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by HYSTERIA (@hysteria.pt) on Mar 8, 2019 at 7:22am PST

[mollymacleodartist]

A short video documenting my interactive installation at Olho De Boi, Lisbon.

The videos of paint puddles (created by using the vibrations of ocean waves to warp the paint) are projected onto a pool of white water surrounded by a soundscape of breath, naturally imitating the rhythm of ocean waves.

The viewer is invited to throw a pebble into the pool, contorting the image and amplification via a hydrophone ensures the viewer adds their own unique moment of sonancy to the soundscape.

[mollymacleodartist]

‘Going Away’ interactive sound installation at Galeria Costa, Pico Island, Azores. 

Created for the Montanha Festival in association with Mirateca Arts. 

[mollymacleodartist]

The audience must enter the shelter alone and interact individually, touching both rocks to trigger the soundscape. If the connection is broken the sound pauses until contact is made once again. I created this interactive installation for Montanha Festival during a one week residency for MiratecArts on the remote volcanic Azorean island of Pico. In this dramatic environment of dark volcanic rock I was inspired to create a subtle sonic intervention on the landscape. Swathes of ancient vineyards cover the island, crosshatched by a labyrinth of stark black walls protecting the vines from the brutal and changeable elements sweeping in off the Atlantic ocean. Within these mazes there are small shelters for the people who work the land to escape to during the numerous inevitable rainstorms that visit the island. Galeria Costa is an outdoor gallery on the southern tip of the island, shadowed by the dormant Pico volcano it is a network of vineyards snaking down to black lava cliffs. I spent a week visiting each shelter within the outdoor gallery, collecting sounds that leaked in to each tiny space as the weather stirred up the surrounding land. I created a soundscape, building slowly, mirroring the rise of an incoming storm, wind whistling through lava fissures, banana trees swaying and creaking, the melodic tap of rain on the undulating iron roofs. I was huddled motionless, capturing the unique sounds of Pico and a poem my grandmother wrote called 'Going Away' came to mind. It's bleak and powerful imagery fitted perfectly with the landscape I was immersed in, so I began to sing the words, crouched in a tiny shelter as the rain began to fall once again. Later that same day I learned my Grandmother had just passed away, the poem became even more poignant and the whole piece was suddenly deeply personal, drawing upon a bottomless well of fresh grief and offering a glinting glimpse at the dark vein of sadness that runs through my family.

[mollymacleodartist]

My work ‘Rust’ from the Tree Rings series will be exhibited at Espacio Pinea  Gallery in Spain. This is for their 5th anniversary celebration exhibition. 

01/11/18 - 31/01/19

The video reveals previously invisible etched tree rings using sonic vibrations. 

The sounds used were collected in a pine forest in Rota, Spain during a one month residency. Contact microphones were used to sample the sonic inner world of the trees. The rust was collected from abandoned, salt eroded shipping equipment found along the edge of the Tagus river in Almada, Portugal.