(Transcribed from a voice note on my iPhone, 22.11.23)

‘The Dye Garden’ (2023) HD Video. (3.45)

‘The Dye Garden’ engages deeply with the concept of longing, examining how voice and language, through their connection to technology, can express a sense of absence and desire. It also explores the fleeting nature of sound and the complex acts of listening, particularly in a world increasingly dominated by digital media. In the video, the narration never fully materialises—it's invited in, counted down, heckled, and ultimately lost to the hiss of magnetic tape, suggesting that communication itself is fragile and elusive.

A choir of AI-generated voices responds, yet their collective inability to speak meaningfully mirrors the struggle to explain or articulate deeper truths. This speaks to the limitations of technology in capturing the full spectrum of human experience. At the heart of the piece is a persistent presence of thresholds—both literal and figurative. These thresholds are not just physical boundaries but also conceptual, reflecting the human body’s own limits, the decay and degradation of materials, and the inevitable passage of time.

The window, a recurring motif in my work, serves as both a frame and a threshold—a boundary between the internal and external, the known and unknown, the contained and the spilling out. It acts as a symbol of mediation, suggesting how we are constantly trying to contain or make sense of what is outside of our understanding, but are ultimately at the mercy of forces that break through and evade us.

This work also meditates on the evaporation of speech and breath—the fading of expression, whether emotional or verbal, into silence. There is a moment of stillness that emerges, captured in the quiet act of listening while in a dream-like state. The final image, where fruit and marble share the same etched pattern, suggests that all things, organic or inanimate, share an inherent impermanence and decay, a shared temporality that links everything together.