The Found collective: Tommy Perman, Ziggy Campbell and Kev Sim, have shifted base from Aberdeen to Edinburgh in an attempt to “crack the central belt”. IDEASFACTORY first profiled the trio in January 2004, on the eve of their first EP launch. Exactly one year on, Lesley Hart plays catch up with their evolving careers in sound and vision, and finds out that even the most creative people need rules (and money).
Triangular thinking
Trying to establish a linear timeline with Tommy, Ziggy and Kev is a pointless exercise. Ask, “What have you been doing over the past 12 months?” and they reel out a load of concepts, sounds and images. With so many projects evolving simultaneously and at different rates, it is impossible for them portion off their year in a linear structure. “We don’t do linear,” Tommy says, “Can’t you tell?”
Luckily, the boys have a slick multimedia website which clearly links and catalogues all their work, called surfacepressure. Having spent the last year working for a graphic design company in Edinburgh, Tommy has been able to put his hi–tech know–how to good use, building a state of the art site which promotes and showcases their work as well as forging links with other creative outfits.
Shared visions
Creative exchange underpins the ethos of the Found collective’s work. Whether they’re bouncing ideas off each other or inviting other artists to remix their sounds and visuals, their work evolves as a collective, interactive experience.
In September 2004 the boys took part in an interactive event called Cabin Exchange in Edinburgh’s Bristow Square.
Z: We turned the cabin into an instrument – just sort of bashed it and stuff and recorded the ambient sounds around about. The idea was we would make this racket during the day – we would limit ourselves to just this one day – and make a track and then copy 50 CDs and trade them off with people for sounds or records or whatever.”
K: We wrote a smart track, swapped some sounds and stuff.
T: it was a total experiment – it did actually turn out pretty successful.
Stop Look Listen
All the work they’ve done over the past year will culminate in an exhibition tour: Stop Look Listen, which opens at Peacock Visual Arts on February 5th, transferring to the Meffan in Forfar on March 26th and then on to the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh on April 28th. The boys are currently cramming to tie up loose ends in time for February’s opening. It’s a towering task, but all three boys agree that deadlines are crucial for focussing their creative energies.
T: We like restrictions. I can’t just work aimlessly – I always set a deadline, a brief for myself.
Z: I think it just encourages you to get better results and make stuff that you wouldn’t normally come up with.
Kev agrees. Full time work has meant being especially hard on himself. “I work in a bar, a lot of hours. But it’s important to have deadlines so that you force yourself to make the time to get work done. So yeah, I just have to force myself to stay up all night drawing.”
Task masters
If boys are said to be crap at multitasking, Found are the exception to the rule. Since they hooked up at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen three years ago, they have kept a clear but broad collective vision. Working together, they generate three dimensional concepts, incorporating music, sound and visuals in a diverse range of media.
Z: Often things you’re juggling will inform each other.
T: Yeah, they all spill into each other.
Z: The thing I like about this exhibition (Stop, Look, Listen) is that it’s not just visual art – I’d probably get pissed off if I was just spending all my time working on visual art, because I’d rather be incorporating music and performance and all the stuff that we’ve been working on.
South central foray
Last year Kev and Ziggy moved from Aberdeen to join Tommy in Edinburgh in an attempt to expand their profiles in Scotland, and find new opportunities.
Z: It’s cool getting up and running again – it’s been good to be in the same area. We’ve done a lot of stuff in Aberdeen, but I’m quite glad that we’re moving somewhere else and we can start breaking Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Tour de force
Just now their focus is the exhibition tour, which will be their biggest and most diverse project to date.
T: The idea was we would make work specific to each gallery space, so it will change and we have a few tricks up our sleeves for it to evolve.
Kev: I’m making stickers for each venue which will be installed straight onto the wall of the gallery. They’ll be drawings specific to each gallery’s surrounding area. So that’s going to evolve as we go into different venues, hopefully it will grow as well and by the third venue it’ll be a much larger installation.
Add your own spin
The boys are inviting you to contribute with their Stop Look Listen poster campaign: an invitation to “Remix our Poster”.
T: you can download the poster from the website and then change it into whatever you want. We’ve been distributing fliers all over the place. We’ve already had some amazing responses – some really smart designs.
Z: We’re not picking one, it’s not a competition or anything, it’s just an interactive project.
Game on
Far from being a static retrospective of past projects, the exhibition tour will be an ongoing experiment in interactive art and music. As well as focussing their triangular vision, placing certain limitations and rules on projects allows the boys scope for change and variation.
T: The point is, using the same building blocks you can make anything, and that pretty much sums up what we do. Music as well – we’re always trying to push the limits of what we can do with just with three noises.
These three boys will be making lots of noise this year all over Scotland, so get in on the remix (see website for details).
