Video and sound artist uncorks the
media art residency

Morris rolled into Sumu

Turun Sanomat /
Kaisa Kujanpää

One can see from the skateboards, plugs and laptop that the american video and sound artist Simon Morris has begun to feel at home in the new media art residency Sumu in Turku.

Morris has already worked one week by the river Aura, in the residence run by artists’ association Arte, adjoined to gallery Titanik.

He researches the urban space and the architecture through skateboarding.

Morris, who has lived in Paris for five years, was born in New York. He has been skateboarding since he was 16 years old.

- I don’t think that skateboarding is sport, it’s more like urban dance or hommage to the city, says Morris.

The artist has already been rolling in Turku, and he also has some movements recorded on film. Although the basic idea of his work is not in the image but in the sound.

- Skateboarding is not just a visual happening, one should also pay regard to the sounds. The people living in the cities usually hear the sounds of the skateboarding. It has become part of the urban city culture, tells Morris.

The sounds of asphalt

The residence project of Simon Morris is called Musique Concrete: Transforming Space, Sound and the City through Skateboarding and Interactivity, which refers in to the asphalt music or concrete music.
However, most of the work happens inside in front of the computer, and not on the hot streets of the city. In the studio Morris is launching a program with his computer. It creates sounds which are transmitted from the skateboard to a receiver. His skateboard has soft wheels, so that their real sound is playing the secondary part in the result.

Bike as an alternative

Sumu has about 20 m2 and it is meant for the studio for the foreign artists-in-residence. The residency period is from one to two months. The artist chosen in the program lives in the guesthouse Domus Aboensis, housed by the Abo Akademi University and as a vehicle he uses a bike.
The artists were chosen in Sumu by the applications, and the periods are already booked until Christmas time. There were a lot of applicants even though it was not so advertised. The artists find information about the residence from the global Res Artis website, among other things.
The artists have no obligation to exhibit during their residency, but for example Simon Morris, who stays in the residence for two months will make a performance in June as a highlight of his residency. Morris is going to skateboard in the gallery, but the final form of the happening is developing step by step.
- The performance will be documentated on video so there is a possibility to see it afterwards also, he says.
Morris has visited Turku the first time in November 2005, when there was a video and music project going on. He has studied languages and culture as well as computer technology.
- Programming is actually a language. Computer languages have their own rules and sentence structures, tells Morris.
Morris is going to continue his work with skateboarding and interactivity also after his residency period in Sumu.
- Skateboarding can mean different things to different people. For me it is investigating the technology.

translation Sanna Syvänen