Lawrence Upton
Close was made 2004 - 2005 as a visual work; but, as with nearly all his visual writing, Lawrence Upton had in mind the possibility of performance, using the visuals as a score. There are some 400 hundred images in all. A sub-set was screen-exhibited at FILE 2006 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
During 2005, arising from Upton’s ongoing collaborative writing, performance and research with John Levack Drever, Drever and Upton used sub-sets of “Close” as indicative scores for what became Close to the Literal ( 20 minutes 8+ channels pre- and real-time electronic treatment, live voice and projections) which was premiered at e-poetry 2005 in London and shown later elsewhere, including Sonic Arts Network Expo 2006.
“Close to the Literal was a complex audio-visual collaboration by poet & artist Lawrence Upton and composer John Drever. Colour images, deriving from coastal landscapes and letter-forms, provided a text/score for vocal performance: pre-recorded, live, and live-re-processed; thus both participants contribute both prepared and improvised material. The room was professionally wired (this takes hours) and the sound was fantastic. Think Dylan & Lanois (Oh Mercy). The piece was essentially episodic but a subtle architectonic seemed discernible over its length. A substantial achievement." (Elizabeth James, UKPoetry 3 October, 2005)
"The electronic poetry field is wide between purely programmed art... and all alternatives of computer-assisted art. I think in particular of the new breath gained by sound poetry, masterly performed by Lawrence Upton. It was to me an enthusiastic illustration of what can be done by mixing analog and digital media." (Patrick-Henri Burgard on e-poetry, 2005)
One of the poetical conceits behind Close and Close to the Literal is the utilised proposition that a graphic may represent a sound. It has been said, by Bob Cobbing, “every mark has its sound” although Upton has always denied that vehemently as unsustainable.
Latterly, he has used the term “indicative notation”; but during his main collaborations with Cobbing, during the 1990s and early 21st century, the problem remain unresolved, with the two working together effectively. Upton has remarked that he approaches each text with a variety of negative capability!
The narrative idea of the works is the portrayal of a world (through which the auditor-seer moves) in the process of creation – “a lettery landscape, as rocks form a rocky landscape.” (Upton, as guest speaker at the Notation Conference, Goldsmith’s College, November 2006). It is a built environment, whether or not one is able to identify the agency of building.
It is a Platonic rather than Judaeo-Christian creation – a “creation scape“ the potential of which is being realised, rather than a sudden instantiation. In this context, the artists' processes are Adamic. They name the universe by responding to it.
The main concept is that of “naming”, the fundamental process of perception, which is heightened in the making of Poetry in its broadest sense. Naming is the title of an open-ended series, the latest of which is Naming for Lucio Agra, published by Intercapillary Space and may linked to from this site
