MADI BOYD

My installations combine moving image with sculpted environments. I find this fusion of projection and physical space is very compelling, and am looking for new ways to envelope and choreograph the viewer within the experience.

My work draws on immersive theatre, expanded cinema, and experimental film. I use film but with emphasis on the physicality and the spatial context.

Please scroll down for individual works.

The Discarded 2021

Shown at Stables gallery, Orleans House, Twickenham

October 2021

The Discarded is a smaller sculptural work created from printed fabric. The fabric is printed with a collage of hundreds of photos of discarded covid masks, which I photographed on walks during the lockdowns in my local area. I collaged them together to form an image that resembles a map. To complete the circle, I used this ‘map’ fabric to create several masks and one wall hanging.

Digital Forest, 2018

Digital Forest is part of an ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration between artist Madi Boyd and cognitive scientist Prof. Polly Dalton. Digital Forest is a multi-sensory moving image installation using sculpture, projections, tactile encounters and 54 channel sound.

The work is informed by attention research – specifically, the theory that ‘soft fascination’ provided by natural environments restores people’s mental resources and helps focus attention (Kaplan, 1995; 2001). I researched and experimented with what factors produce the restorative effects of a forest, including: form, light, movement, scale, touch, depth of field, dispersed sounds, level of complexity, mystery and underlying geometry. These were incorporated into an abstracted performative and immersive experience, embodying the sublime theatricality of a real forest. The audience traverses a large dark space where sound and choreographed complex projected patterns, and constructions ‘perform’. 

In addition, we ran experiments where participants took part in an attention demanding test before and after spending time in the forest, in order to see whether attention was restored in the same way as natural environments. 

Project website: www.digitalforest.org.uk

Video documentation of the installation: 

Playing The Bridge, 2017

Playing the Bridge was an audio-visual installation made in collaboration with composer Nye Parry and architect Jonathan McDowell for Hull City of Culture 2017. The installation was sited on Scale Lane Bridge in Hull, a swing bridge designed by Jonathan McDowell. It involved a large floor projection created from the architect's schematics, which acted as an 'x-ray reveal' of the workings of the bridge, which normally cannot be seen. Other aspects of the installation were large projections that collaged hundreds of photos of the making of the bridge added to audio of interviews with the fabricators themselves. 

Projective Distortions, 2014

Projective Distortions is formed of three similar structures with video projected onto them from very small, almost invisible, projectors. The sctructures together form a screen for the projections. The structures are created from a large number of gauze pyramids attached together, creating an irregular shape. The structures revolves slowly so that the shape of them appear to change and morph. It is this movement of irregular shapes that sculpts the film. The title refers to the image being pulled and distorted in space by the screen structure, and to a term in graphic geometry involving the distortion of three-dimensional space when “projected" (or drawn) on a two-dimensional surface. In the work, two-dimensional film is distorted by the construction and creation of three-dimensional space.

In addition, the image is distorted, doubled and mirrored by the properties of the gauze as it lets only a certain amount of light through. As the structure revolves, because of its irregularity, the viewer sees the projections through varying numbers of layers of screen. Therefore the image may sometimes fleetingly appear mirrored four times, sometimes only once. The images look to be trapped inside the pyramidal shape, for example, birds fly through and over the structure, but seem to be inside a cage.

The film being projected is a montage of motion. It includes the movement of people and animals as well as machines and transportation. These different forms of motion, collide and overlap in the film, forming a semi-abstract collage.

Fragment Cinema, 2013

Fragment Cinema is a sculptural screen that plays with the illusory nature of moving image by fragmenting both the screen and the film projected onto it and allowing them to interact in new and unusual ways. The screen is a performer in the film, and the form of it creates a film with an inside. The projected imagery is on the brink of narrative, using montage, cadence, form and movement to create meaning, and highlighting the role of the spectator’s imagination in any film viewing.
Music by Nye Parry

Enemy Deception, 2008

Enemy Deception is an experiential installation. It consists of interwoven white wire grids in a black space. The wires exist on every plane and interlace with each other. A projection of a film made entirely from photos of the grids is then projected back onto the structure itself. The installation appears as a drawing in space- constantly moving and changing with more or less of the lines visible as the film changes.

(S)Harp Light, 2008

Building on 'Enemy Deception', this piece consists of coloured projection on woven lines. This installation was shown at The Crypt gallery, St Pancras, London in 2008. I have since developed it as a holographic projection stage performance.

Les Instantanes

Les Instantanes, translating to ‘snapshots’ is in fact a 3D collage constructed from hundreds upon hundreds of photos of Paris. The images are a mixture of photos I’ve taken, photos taken by famous photographers, of famous Parisians, scenes from the history of Paris and from films. Movie stars, French leaders, scientists, artists, rioters, moments of collective memory all co-exist with elements of my personal past in Paris.

At the centre is Daguerre, and the first photo ever taken, which was of a Paris street.