Watch the full Trippy Scroller live performance and sound piece by Toby Christian, held at PEER in June.
Trippy Scroller Projector, 2018. Image: Jack Symes
Through the live animation of drawn and written string characters, Toby Christian’s Trippy Scroller reimagines the form of the scroll, extending the artists recurring string motif, through the use of domestic archival apparatus.
A laminator is remodelled to drive a roll of ersatz-celluloid over the lens of an outmoded overhead projector, creating a slow-moving animated procession of frozen string shapes, secluded in their pouches. This long sequence of interrelated forms has been carefully arranged by the artist to explore figurative, linguistic and political registers of cotton string, and integrates examples of string figures, some of the oldest recorded storytelling devices in human history.
This scrolling animation is accompanied by a live sound track mixed by Christian. Contact microphones attached to the equipment will amplify and alter the slow humming of the motor, and the grinding, masticating noises of the plastic as it repeatedly passes through the rollers of the laminator.
The looped animation is approximately 16 minutes in length.
Words courtesy of Toby Christian. Images and footage courtesy of Jack Symes, 2018.
PEER would like to thank all who attended the event.
Click the image below to watch the film:
Trippy Scroller Performance, 2018. Image: Jack Symes
Toby Christian lives and works in London. His books Collar (2017) and Measures (2013) are published by Koenig Books, London. “Collar”, the second book of writing by Toby Christian, extends his attraction to the description of objects in fine detail, where focus is accented by an amplified magnification of surface and substance. Recent solo exhibitions include Pedestrian Confetti, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Leeds (2015); Some Sky, Vigo Gallery, London (2015); A Bunch of Keys, NAM project, Milan (2015); The Plastically Parroting, Intermedia, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2014) and The Tread and the Rise, Baró Galeria, São Paulo (2013).