Robert Shaw
Monoclock
About the artist
For several years now with my solo project 'mighty math' and the occasional collaboration I have been working in the digital, sampling, glitch, experimental area of music composition. my particular interest has been the freedom that sampling and digital field recording gives the composer for manipulating the small disparate and insignificant sounds that have been overlooked or never thought of as audio in the first place and arranging and programming them to be heard in an emotionally engaging and holistic context. I have more recently been using digital video with the same kind of ethos, specifically to try and show the beautiful energy in inert objects.
About the work
I first got the idea for the short film Monoclock when I found this little digital battery clock in a draw of odds and ends I was searching through. It had probably been there for a couple of years but it was still telling the time. As I put it to one side the lid began to slowly open until it put itself in an angled upright position, it was such a lovely movement, I became fascinated by it and decided I would make a film of it revealing its secret life to us. I placed the clock on a floor lamp in my flat, to give it a stage. I wanted to film this neglected plastic clock taking on a life and emotion of its own (to watch its lonely waltz being acted out in its chrysalis room, makes you feel like a voyeur, or a witness to a mystery) in its simplest form the film is looking at an ordinary everyday object in a different way and trying to see its poetry. I wrote the music specifically for the film, to give it a rhythmic mechanical isolation. Its fascinating when what we consider the ordinary is taken out of context, to watch how it manifests itself.