Winter Wild - Artist in Residence Bridget Chappellour

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

Bridget Chappell

our second Winter Wild artist in residence.

Bridget Chappell (aka Hextape) is an artist trying to contextualise a lot of trespass and nostalgia through raves, dance music, custom sound systems, pirate radio stations, poetry, contemporary and classical cello, doom metal, podcasts, and essays. Their albums ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ (Anterograde, 2019) and ‘Undertow’ (Heavy Machinery Records, 2020) received critical acclaim. Chappell is an artist larping as a scientist; data sonification, 3D sound modelling, live coding, siren phase cancellation, etc. Chappell is the founder of the award-winning Sound School (Narrm\Melbourne), current co-director of artist-run initiative Watch This Space (Mparntwe\Alice Springs), and tries to leave a trail of rave breadcrumbs wherever they go.

PROJECT SUMMARY

During my Winter Wild residency with The Development Lab I’ll be using the Arts Inc. gallery as a space to produce my new album, which explores the musicality of MRI scans and their relationship to raves and oral culture. Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanners create incredible sounds while they work, that cannot be recorded – like a microwave, the machines do not accept metal. It’s a rave for one, that you cannot dance or listen back to – you just have to lie there in the tube and, hopefully, enjoy it.

Ill at ease in an often injured body trying to lead a “full life”, I’ve become kind of obsessed with MRIs, and look forward to them during treatment processes. Their ephemeral music challenges our screenshot-trigger fingered, archival-obsessed mode of experiencing the world that has made our capacity for memorisation go slack. If I want to re-live an MRI scan and the techno its magnets generate from hitting my own body, it’s asking me to relearn an oral tradition.

The Melbourne Brain Centre has kindly agreed to take me on as a visiting artist, where I’ll be able to learn more about MRI machines and their music as both a subject and researcher. Immediately thereafter I’ll travel to my residency in Apollo Bay to record these recitations and craft them into an album using electronic hardware, Ableton Live, and cello. Through this, I hope I can communicate some of the magic of MRIs to those who haven’t had to get one.