Malfunctioning Wor(l)ds
Ongoing body of work
An evolving project exploring what communication becomes when it is shaped through listening, drawing, sound and adjustment, rather than words alone.
Malfunctioning Wor(l)ds is an ongoing development of a text-based drawing language that has evolved over the past fifteen years through wall drawings, notebook sketches, screen prints, live drawing and 3D digital environments. Across these forms, the work asks how meaning is shaped through relation, pressure, hesitation, response and change.
Current Development: Live Drawing and Spatial Sound
A live performance strand of Malfunctioning Wor(l)ds is being developed with Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, bringing together live drawing, amplified material sound, spatial audio, projection and improvised music.
In this version, communication is not treated as the clear transmission of a message. It is made through response: between drawing and sound, performer and musician, image and instrument, gesture and silence. The work does not treat difference as a problem to solve, or as something to celebrate from a distance. What is shared is not a single position, message or outcome, but the act of listening, looking, adjusting and making space for another response.
At a time when difference is often used to separate, oppose or harden positions, this performance asks what communication might become when difference remains active, audible and visible: not as a barrier to relation, but as its catalyst.
Experimental Interactive Digital Prototype
One strand of Malfunctioning Wor(l)ds is an interactive 3D digital prototype developed in Unreal Engine. The work invites the viewer/player into a fragmented landscape constructed from drawings, handwritten phrases, collage fragments and digital structures.
At the centre of the prototype is the looping phrase: “something is happening.” Repeated, layered and refracted across the environment, the phrase becomes both urgent and empty, reflecting the pressure of constant information, alerts, headlines and demands to respond.
Rather than functioning as a conventional game with goals or outcomes, the prototype is being developed as a navigable artwork. Movement through the environment alters the soundscape, drawing attention to how perception, attention and orientation shift in response to the site.
This version remains in development. Future work will involve further collaboration to refine the interaction, sound design, visual language and relationship between the digital prototype and the wider project.