An audiovisual installation
AV1
Dave Allinson
Phill Brown
Moving image.
Sound. Space.
01 / The installation
A work experienced
by moving through it.
AV1 brings projected images and layered sound into an architectural space. A simple entrance opens into the main chamber and a separate piano room. Two multilayered corridors extend from the chamber, with a faint low light revealing their depth around the projected figures.
These digital studies explore the relationship between the images, the structure and the visitor’s position.
02 / Artist statement
Dave Allinson
Artist text for
Pease, Butler & Spence.
Working to achieve the release of a CD titled AV1 (1998) Dave Allinson had teamed up with producer Phill Brown to carry out a series of performance based installations in the North East and subsequently the Edinburgh Festival. Much of the initial audio recording took place in Darlington with Brown mixing and mastering the finished CD in a London studio. The installation was then commissioned for the opening of the Corner-house nightclub located in the undercroft at Middlesbrough station.
The work was presented through the use of multiple light projections using the Victorian architecture of the undercroft as its screen; floor sculptures with speakers and additional screens located on the walls and floors created an immersive ambient soundscape changing the acoustic properties and volume shifts as each viewer moved through the tunnels, passages and storage rooms of the nightclub.
The track ‘Piano’ was specifically written for this installation by a musician and singer-songwriter Brown had worked with previously on Talk Talk albums. Playing in isolation in a storage room – where a deconstructed piano and light projection had been placed – the choreography and composition of Piano filtered out into the entire undercroft, blending with the other continuous looping tracks.
The foundational grounding in Allinson’s PP&LM work can be traced back to having organic natural origins in the landscape and/or the figure. The work screened in the exhibition is a refreshed visual response to the original AV1 soundtrack and attempts to retain some of the qualities and components of the Corner-house installation.
Revisiting AV1 work prompted Allinson to acquire skill-sets associated with current and developing technologies; re-apply his preference for hand-held camera work rather than tripod; make staccato interruptions of shutter speed to unsettle the inherent legato of filmic movement and; hold closely the intent to bring temporality and spontaneity into play. It’s a music thing.
Pease, Butler & Spence03 / Producer & recording engineer
Phill Brown
AV1 collaborator
A recording career spanning experimental music, rock, reggae and electronic sound.
Phill Brown began at London’s Olympic Studios in 1967, learning his craft as a tape operator on sessions with artists including Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. He became a house engineer at Island’s Basing Street Studios in 1970, before working independently as an engineer and producer.
His career includes work with Bob Marley, John Martyn, Robert Palmer, Faithless and Dido, as well as live recording with Pink Floyd. With Talk Talk, he engineered Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, working alongside Mark Hollis and producer Tim Friese-Greene.
For AV1, Brown collaborated with Dave Allinson and mixed and mastered the original recording. His studio experience forms a distinct part of the project’s meeting of image and sound.
The memoir
Are We Still Rolling?
Brown’s account of a life in recording: the sessions, the musicians and the human experience behind the finished records.
About the book