Rob Brown is interested in the combination and interaction of different methods of logic and systems. These concepts of logic and systems are drawn from various sources such as primitive fractals, experimental sound processing/sequencing, compression algorithms used in digital media and the interspace between different media. The combination and interaction of these structures engages with ideas found in the cognitive sciences that have long interested Brown, pattern seeking and phenomenology especially. Taking components from these various systems and playing with them is both Brown’s attempt to investigate the logic of these structures and to allow space for them to transform, interfere with and re-inform one another through their translation into components of drawings and sound pieces. There is this idea of Homo Ludens, or “Man the Player,” first put forth by Dutch historian and cultural theorist, Johan Huizinga. A key part of this idea is that we are who we are because we learn by playing with things, ideas, nature, language. This illustrates Brown’s approach. He is not out to prove something in a prescriptive manner. Rather he attempts to work through something to figure out what’s there that’s keeping me engaged.
Duophonic drawing pod is partnership with Site Space mobile residency. It is a 12′ long camping trailer that has been repurposed into a mobile project space, creating an immersive multi-sensory experience that is controlled and manipulated through simple means of drawing and mark-making. In recording, altering and playing back the sounds the participants create through drawing or writing. They are put into an altered relationship with something that they are so accustomed to hearing that they usually tune it out. Once the sound has been foregrounded and their experience of it has shifted, something that was previously tangential and ephemeral is given a new significance. With this new aural awareness, they begin to make marks with the focus on how those marks produce different sounds and the way they made those marks changed the characteristics of the resultant sounds along with the visual components.