Flux: A Visual Response

Zoë McDonnell

Interview by L. Valena

To start, can you describe what you responded to?

I received a link to a piece of music. It was a video, and there were two pieces back to back, one two-minute and one six-minute. It was a beautiful video. Not just the audio, but the visual component was also important for me. The music was kind of droney, heavy. It was very textural audio. I was thinking ,"do I want to listen to it the first time when I'm actively drawing? How do I want to do it?"

I landed on listening to it a few times, closing my eyes, and just kind of trying to collect moods or kind of picturing visual textures. At times making notes of what materials came to mind, or layers/density of tone. I think that really, throughout the piece there was different energy and trying to take notes on that. So I listened to it a few times. I decided that- instead of just having a finished piece- to try to capture my interaction with the piece over time. That was why the video seemed important. The way I was responded emotionally and visually to the music changed throughout the piece.

So, what if I did a time lapse, and tried to finish the whole thing in 8 minutes? When I actually started, that was my plan. To push play and hit stop when it was over. And I think I ended up listening to it three times on a loop. I had over twenty minutes of footage. I kind of thought that if I could just speed it up and have something that could be watched and evoke that quickly for the person viewing my piece. It doesn't necessarily have to be matched up with the original audio. That felt important to me in making it, not necessarily as what someone might get from seeing it.

You said when you first heard it, you were making notes. If you can put it into words, can you say more about what you were writing down?

When I'm trying to articulate it into words, it usually defaults to materials-based. So charcoal, ink wash, pattern. That was what was coming up for me at first. But I realized that was more about my 'trick' for capturing it, and not as much what I was actually coming up for me when I closed my eyes and tried to come up with a mental image of what I was hearing. I think I do that without thinking about it just regularly in my life. So I thought it might be interesting to really hone in on that skill- image mapping from audio. I was almost picturing densities of fabric, or shredded fabric, if I'm trying to picture textures that are not necessarily drawing materials. Tonally, I pictured black and white because that's what I like to do, and also the video and the cover of the album were both black and white. I was picturing different densities of textures, foliage, smog. Lightening bolt/ shattering moments.

There were definitely energetic things that I was trying to picture, as well as atmospheric/textural components. How I would translate that into mark-making is ink wash with jagged charcoal marks. Trying also to see what it is before that. Before translating it literally, what's coming up? It was kind of a combination of atmospheric/textural images, and energetic motion.

How would you say this relates to the rest of your work?

I think I have a comfort zone in terms of mark-making and visual language that I default to. It was really great having something to respond to that I felt was evoking a similar visual language anyway. It facilitating a conversation, rather than me responding to my own marks, and my visual archive of my own work. It felt like a natural association with the language I already use, and just spotlighting parts of my visual language that lends itself more appropriately to the response.

At first, I was thinking that I really didn't want to make what I normally make. That's always a fear of mine, and it comes from critiques in college where people would say I was just doing the same thing I've always done. So it's an underlying fear. To realize that this is still how I enjoy responding to things, and having that conversation, felt normal in a great way.

A lot of my work is imagination or intuitively generated. This reminded me when I would set up still lives for myself, because I needed to break out of the monotony of what I just do if given zero new stimulus. I think the musical piece played a similar role as a still life as far as engaging something else. Honestly it feels more comfortable engaging with audio than just drawing a still life.

Audio just goes right into your brain.

Right. So how do I translate this audio into my visual language? That was the task at hand. How do I a) interpret this in my visual language and b) engage with and respond, on the fly? Instead of hearing it, absorbing it, and then putting myself in a bubble and digesting it, it was important for me to respond to it in real time. It felt more like a conversation.

Do you think the finished drawing or the video is the final piece?

I think the video. It ends on the finished piece anyway. Part of what has been really important to me in making things recently has been that movement or energy in making it. I don't necessarily think I would hang this finished piece somewhere on it's own. The process of making it feels important.

It's almost like a performance.

Yes.

I think that's especially cool, given your history as a dancer.

Zack [Taylor] got really excited to help me! He was asking about camera angles, brought out lights, and edited it. And that was also interesting. In the past I've been kind of protective- I want to do whatever I do without external manipulation. I wonder if what I make with assistance is mine anymore. But I felt like it was a cool way of capturing what I'm trying to do on another level, so that felt nice.

What else do you want to say about this?

Part of why the video feels like the piece to me is as I was making it, it was falling apart. It was four pieces of paper taped together, because I don't have my roll of paper at home, and I'm not comfortable going to my studio. It's funny, because I was saying how I didn't have all of the materials that I wanted. But that's not what this is- it's not about some archival, finished, 6-foot piece or something. The piece feels like scraping together scraps and destroying them in a way that feels productive. It was falling apart, and I was thinking should I separate them into four panels, and try to save them in a serious way? No. Part of it is the trash factor. The desintigration. A lot of the music was evoking wreckage for me. Shipwrecks. Destruction. Aftermath. Decomposition. So part of not being protective of the actual materials was maybe trying to recreate that in some way.

There's so much beauty in constraints. That's what this project is all about, but there's an extra level of constraint when you also can't get the things that you actually want.

I think that part of the reason I enjoy weird multimedia stuff is because there's not a 'right way' to do it. It creates limitations that you have to deal with, or that also become part of the conversation. That's part of the joy of responding to a piece, it's another factor in your thinking the whole time.

Is there any advice you would give to someone else doing this?

Think about what rules you have about how you make things and why you make things, and try to put those aside. You get out of it what you put into it. Is that too cheesy?

No, it's not! That is a statement that is always applicable.

I think it's an opportunity to do some self-examination of your work. What about my work creates the most unique response to this? Everyone's response is going to be unique, so what conversation do I want to have with this piece?

Call Number: M27NA | M28FI.tayflu

Zoë McDonnell is a multimedia visual artist and a professional in the sustainability sector. She is from Sonora, CA and is living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her artwork investigates her interest in the temporal nature of materials, memory and the body's experience of space.