About
Jazzy Usiskin is a visual artist based in London. Her work explores the inter-relationship between sound, music and the visual. Inspired by Electronic music and industrial sounds she creates multimedia visual interpretations of music and sound, through drawings, collage and print. Since studying Fine Art with History of Art at Leeds, she has curated two exhibitions and has collaborated with musicians and DJ’s, creating motion graphic design work for live events.
Sound subsides in an invisible realm.
I have always been fascinated by the visualisation of sound, uncovering sounds invisibility and questioning ways of visually seeing what we hear. My practice consists of rendering the supposedly intangible, creating multimedia visual interpretations of sound and music through drawings, collage, and print. Through translating sound into vision and vice versa my work highlights a binding relationship between the visual and the sonic; disputing the silence of images and the invisibility of sound.
Conventional music notation is a functional yet limiting attempt to render and organise sound. Favouring interpretation over representation. My scores deconstruct these existing visual sonic depictions to focus on the sounds themselves over the music. Fascinated by electronic music, my early scores aimed to illustrate the electronic sounds I heard, transforming them from audio into visualisations. Encoding abstracted sounds, they aspired to capture people’s auditory imagination, increasing our sonic capabilities, and encouraging a more holistic perception of the transformation and interaction between the visual and aural.
This translation is demonstrated within my processes of making. Working through analogue processes of drawing and collage, my designs were then manipulated, subverted, and replicated using the mechanical means of the photocopier and printer.The materials used are simple and calculated: black pen, electrical tape, and layered acetate prints. All the materials assemble into one composition in the photocopier, this becomes a central feature of my work, they bring their environment into their composition. The sonic noise and fuzz of the machine is comparable to the mechanical sounds in electronic music. The use of black and white is also purposeful, relating to conventional music notation. The mechanical sounds produced by the photocopier and printer became the soundtrack to my works, binding them to their process.
Existing as aesthetic pieces of visual art, the scores possess the potential for transforming into sonic forms: functioning as visual maps for abstracted, anarchic sounds and compositions. Presenting opportunities to be performed sonically, they encourage collaboration and dialogue between artists and musicians, transforming form as they pass through materials and individuals. Displaying a strong visual language, the works contain distinct sounds, but they do not talk. Transgressing conceptions, the scores emancipate sound from restrictive visual forms, liberating performers, encouraging free interpretation and the production of unconventional resonances and compositions.
There is no structure or code to the notations, yet the marks, textures, and layers facilitate a suggestion to the amplification of individual sounds, in a similar function to the role of the horizontal lines in traditional notation. Process trumps outcome when it comes to interpretation and I purposefully provide no instructions on how to perform the works.
I invite you to listen and respond, visually and sonically.
Free interpretation is essential and welcomed.
Selected Exhibitions
2024
Cost of Living Billboard Campaign, https://goodgrowthhub.org.uk , https://www.tagagency.co.uk
2023
Work Party, Leeds-based Visual Dance Party, Belgrave, Leeds, Live Visuals Performance.
2022
North London Art Collective Summer Exhibition, Stoke Newington Gallery, curated and exhibited
2022
Work Party, Leeds-based Visual Dance Party, Assembly House Studios Leeds, Live Visuals Performance.
2021
Wish You Were Here, Yorkton House
2021
Fickle Spaces, University of Leeds
2019
Transit, ZWAP Bilbao, Spain
2019
Inner City Electronic, Hi-Fi Leeds, Live visual performance for ‘Ross From Friends’
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