Wyndel Hunt is a sound artist who plays around with drone; his work carries the weight of repetition but it’s liberally sprinkled with elements of shoegaze and encased by walls of noise. Thom Heileson is a visual artist and designer who subverts photographic images of actual architectural structures to create fictional spaces. In perhaps the simplest comparison, each artist is concerned with creating and extinguishing emotion, intensity, tone and even volume.
Unit of Selection is the collaboration between these Seattle-based artists, a package consisting of a CD-R of Hunt’s music and a DVD-R of Heileson’s videos set to this stimulating soundtrack. Hunt’s offering is almost a release in itself – teeth-gratingly stark at times, but redeemed by some truly inventive tonal and textural experimentation. Though there is much recognisable material and an (almost) uplifting, vivacious sentiment on the first few compositions, the latter half segues into unsettling territory. Static and fizz gradually encroach, creating a near-sinister mood that reverberates beyond the chasms of intermittent drone.
Heileson’s visual contribution is a perfect accompaniment to the often harsh compositional choices of Hunt, and selected pieces have been installed in art galleries in San Diego and Seattle. Opener ‘Unit of Selection 2’ takes images and video of architectural remnants and turns them into a glacial arrangement, bleaching them to within inches of familiarity. Houses, walls and scaffolding are stretched and morphed in sync with the soundtrack, resulting in a scene that could almost be mistaken for an arctic cave, ice crystals perched perilously from the ceiling awaiting their downfall.
Heileson’s spaces are not just accompanied by Hunt’s sounds – they are truly inhabited by them. It’s a mesmerising feeling watching the carefully studied light and shadow of the structures slowly engulf the rest of the visual elements as the music fills the void left behind. To some this collaboration might seem like an overindulgent, overly complex visual installation, but to me the result seems so organic that it will transcend the realms of the art gallery and enter our own living, breathing spaces.
Alexandra Savvides
