Paul Miller

This was initially an Arts Council funded project - an innovative fusion of glass-making and digital technology in an experimental investigation of light and form created in collaboration with innovative glass artist Griet Beyaert.

The final piece was a large scale, site-responsive installation at Left Bank, Leeds (a de-consecrated church). The network of suspended glass sculptures was projection-mapped; live visual and sound mixing performances took place each night of the event. The videos and sounds were recorded and processed at the venue, responding to the architecture and inherent acoustic properties during an intensive research, development and creation period.

The Glass Cyphers went on to exhibit collaboratively nationally and internationally including the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh and The National Centre for Craft & Design, Sleaford.

Exploring art, light and sound in Lille!

Through International Relations Leeds I was selected for a residency as part of a multi-national collaboration of artists to create new work with Les Rencontres Audiovisuelles, a creative projection mapping collective based in Lille. A link to the short blog piece I wrote is here: exploring light and sound in Lille.

I worked on two collaborative pieces for the final show, plus a binaural sound walk recording: en route vers Fat Madeleine.

An art-science installation co-created with University of Salford for Manchester Science Festival 2017. Working closely with marine biology researchers and a team of makers and technicians, an immersive dry aquarium was created bringing the sights and sounds of the ocean to life whilst using interactive zones to highlight research on pollution and invasive species in a fun and accessible way.

As well the visual, interactive and design content creation, I created an expansive, layered, underwater soundscape.

You can listen to it here.

An interactive glass sculpture commissioned for Manchester Science Festival 2015 as part of a thematic discussion around future renewable energy. This piece, made in collaboration with glass artist Griet Beyaert is inspired by the potential for human kinetic energy recapture and also the fact that despite much early innovation, development has been incredibly slow. A looped network of glass sculptures hangs in the air, through which electric light and sound energy pulses and flows gently, until we step closer and take control: all our movements are monitored by an infra-red camera (Kinect), so that speed, distance and direction all influence the current and sound. As our kinetic energy is directly harvested and processed to be projected out into the space, we stand in front of the glowing, sparking glass and witness the effects of the movements immediately, showing us the relationship between human activity and energy output. The piece invited participation and play but also led to many interesting discussions about this neglected area of study.

The work was seen by over 2000 people during the course of the festival and an integral part of the work was interacting with large groups of all ages, disseminating technical and creative information, and encouraging play in the installation.

Commissioned by Leeds BID as part of the Christmas in Leeds Art Trail; a large, sound-reactive, projection-mapped sculpture created in collaboration with Griet Beyaert. The Cloud was suspended across the lower atrium of the famous Corn Exchange to create a stunning focal point and a place for the public to gather beneath. It was also a performance space as a curated programme of musicians played with and manipulated the content of the dual projections, comprising layers of video underneath swirling particles which respond to pitch and volume modulations.

A solo exhibition of new work commissioned by Craven Museum and Art Gallery. “memento” is an investigation of the ephemeral nature of history and the passing of time and memory which re-imagined Skipton Town Hall - it's rich history and architecture and the people who have inhabited it over the years. The installation included oil paintings, soundscapes, video and projection mapping.

All the imagery that made up the paintings was created from the hundreds of photographs taken in and around Skipton Town Hall. 3 video works were made also using these photos. 2 finished sound pieces were made using abstracted layered binaural recordings; listen here.

New Light - Illuminating Artefacts was a body of work and installation Commissioned by Craven Museum and Gallery in Skipton, North Yorkshire as part of the Museum: Indispensable project. The work explored themes of interpretation using the museum’s diverse collection, including, animal skulls, paintings, a wedding dress and a World War Two recruitment poster.

This was a big step forward in my “projection content mapping” technique. 16 objects in total were curated from the archives, and individually projection mapped, then versions of the objects were re-imagined and projected back onto themselves, creating new ways of seeing, some abstracted, some more narrative driven (particularly with the poster and the paintings).

Using the Oral Histories Archives, a soundscape was also made to accompany the immersive projections.

As part of the project there was a focus on engaging the young people in the Craven Community with the wide ranging collections and having the opportunity to contribute to the final. Creative drop-in sessions open to the public were held alongside my research into the collection, allowing the public to learn about the process behind the work being explored. I worked intensively in the gallery space in the weeks running up to the opening of the exhibition, with open access for visitors to observe the working process of making the work.

This video shows footage from the premiere showing of a new collaboration between Paul Miller and Dean Kemp, a fusion of sculpture, sound, video and projection mapping. This first experiment came out of a discussion on the themes of the sculpture, leading to an intense week of finding and editing footage, creating sound, exploring projecting on the reflective, textured surfaces, then creating two 13 minute live mixed pieces (the video layers were mixed first, then the sound was mixed to the resulting visuals). We are planning to develop this work in both scope and scale.

You can listen to one of the full audio mixes in sound.

Commissioned by Lakeland Arts for The Blackwell Arts & Crafts House, this is an immersive installation created with glass artist Griet Beyaert as a response to the house and its location overlooking Lake Windermere, its history and its collections and interior. Using sound and video recordings in and around the famous building, a new, multi-layered piece was created, a dynamic interpretation of a rich tapestry of architecture, art and nature.

As part of the project, school groups from the local area took part in workshops and created sounds and video of their own with us, which were edited and used in an end of term event, projecting live-mixed content mapped onto the building exterior.

Listen to the full audio file in here.

As part of an artist residency by invitation from The Naked Craft Project in Kobe, Japan which promotes cultural exchange between UK and Japan, this project was a collaboration between The Glass Cyphers (myself and Griet Beyaert), a dancer and a choreographer.

We collected thematic and site-specific audio and video then edited these into a 30 minute piece. We suspended 6 glass sculptures in a challenging space incorporating two wide stairways and a landing space. The video was projection mapped onto the glass and sound piece played out into the space.

As part of the installation we also did 3 live shows in collaboration with the Japanese artists, with the visuals also moving onto the walls and ceiling, following the choreography.

This is a specially made live video mix for This Was Hardcore, a video art dance party celebrating 20 years of Pulp’s This Is Hardcore at SXRVXVE in Brooklyn, N.Y. 2018. The piece includes a soundtrack made using de-constructed samples from Pulp's This is Hardcore.

Music video for underground shoe gaze band Laboratory Noise. Shot on a tight, one day-one night schedule at a disused Job Centre in Leeds city centre.

Made as part of Frozen Music Collective, this large-scale, interactive building projection was Commissioned for Leeds Light Night in partnership with Leeds College of Art.

With the Vernon Street Campus as a canvas, an undulating, sound-reactive tapestry was created. The public was invited to interact with the projection using an electronic drum pad, controlling the depth and speed of visuals. Each hour, live musicians took over with improvised sets, making the building vibrate, vividly shifting reality and creating stunning sound and vision spectacle.

This is a video for musician Jonny Lee Hart, ex of the Kiara Elles, now of Delorean Drivers. The sequences were put together just using still photo sequences, lending to the disjointed broken narrative.

Live video projection performance collaboration with Anglo-french musical collective DORS! (2 members are acclaimed duo DonkeyMonkey , plus Chris Sharkey and Christophe de Bezenac).

Each set was completely improvised as were the visuals, incorporating 8 layers of video at any one time with additional sound-reactive input from a mic and Microsoft Kinect sensor.