Untitled (Apparition)

A site specific performance produced in collaboration with Ian de Massini for All Saints’ Church in Cambridge. In this visual music work a three-screen projection unfolds alongside a live musical score composed by avant-garde 20th Century French composer, organist and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen.

The performance centres around All Saints’ organ, with visuals projected onto its pipes as it is played - the organ pipes being some of the only surfaces in the building not to have been richly decorated by Frederick Leach. During the eight-minute performance, hand painted patterns race up and down the pipes vertically, mimicking ornamental sound or strips of celluloid film running through a projector. In reproducing the designs that can be found all around the church using only black ink, Michael omitted the painted colour from All Saints’ walls. This is replaced with coloured light during the performance. Filters are applied live over the projector lenses in response to the music (performed by de Massini) in an attempt to evoke Messiaen’s experience of colour-sound synaesthesia.

2023, projection performance

8 minutes

Music performed by Ian de Massini: Apparition de l’eglise eternelle, Olivier Messiaen, 1922

Funded by The Arts Society Cambridge. With special thanks to The Churches Conservation Trust.

Installation views at All Saints’ Church, Cambridge. Presented as part of two person exhibition BLEACH with Andrew Munks, 2023