Could you tell us a little about this project?
The project is called “I Just Called”, which, as everyone knows through the song of a similar name, people contact each other by telephone, and if the person who is being called is not there, we leave them a message.
So, the premise behind the artwork is that people are leaving messages to someone or something that they love.
It is a participatory project, so the messages people leave become the material of the project. The initial presentation of the work was a series of handsets suspended from a ceiling, and people could listen to the messages through the handsets, but unfortunately, COVID suddenly meant that that kind of presentation was no longer viable.
I decided then to shift the project online, so I created a website that was optimised for smartphones, and that kept the idea of the phone message as an integral part of the project.
It also retains the idea of the dynamic between connection and separation- which is exemplified by the phone as a thing – someone at one end of the telephone, trying to connect with the recipient in a different place. There is physical separation, and then because the message is not heard in real-time, there is also the time dislocation, the time when the message is left compared to the time the message is listened to.
And the project revolves around aural messages rather than texts, for example?
Well, I’m a sound artist. My main orientation was the question of sound. I still think that the sound that most people relate to with the most vigour is the sound of the human voice. We are hardwired to react to that. The voice is a powerful embodiment of human agency. So, there is the question of agency and how voice communication represents that agency and its nuances. That is why I decided to go with the aural messages rather than texts.
What about the question of love?
I think that is the thing which people will talk about with the most robustness, and with the highest level of authenticity.
At the moment, there are messages using twenty different languages, from Māori to Cantonese, other languages. I speak English, a little bit of Māori, French and German, but when I listen to these messages in other languages, I can connect with the emotional content within them. Even if you don’t understand the words, you can understand that it is heartfelt. That is quite affecting.
There is also the idea of making the personal, universal. Humans are empaths. We can understand that other people feel like we feel, and I think making work that highlights that point is very important in today’s economic and political circumstances.
At the time of this interview you are in Derry. Where did the project start out?
It started off as part of my final exhibition for a Master’s Degree in Creative Technology in Auckland, New Zealand. That was the version with the handsets from the ceiling. Now, it’s folded into my practice-based PhD work at Ulster University.
I kept going because of those ideas I talked about earlier, connection, dislocation, and separation; and there are also the ideas regarding participation, improvisation, and questions of the openness and closedness of an artwork. All sorts of ideas wind their way through the project, which I will be investigating as the project moves forward.
For more information about this project see link below.
PR I Just Called March 2024 (pdf)
For more information about Colin Woods’ work see the link below
colinjameswoods.com/
