Cultural Influence on the Creative Flow | Sam Welch | Angick Blog
Cultural Influence on the Creative Flow
Sam Welch
Sam Welch
Coming from South Africa and settling in Scotland, my practice is heavily influenced by diversity and the beauty of collective differences. I am a multi-media artist, sound designer and mixing engineer working in the mediums of sound, audio-visual and spatial sculpture. My work is often created using location recorded sound from personal travels and ad-hoc visuals, capturing what it means to notice something. Focusing on recontextualising the world around us and challenging our predefine notions of what ‘things’ are and how they ‘should’ belong. I am fascinated with exploring the relationship between perception and the self. Influenced by rapid visual collage, music concrete and electronic music production.
My work is intrinsically people-focused, commenting on the internal conversations we often have with ourselves. Our most intimate moments lost in communication, forced to exist solely within us. Works are designed to create a starting point from which to further develop internal personal conversations whether individually and internally or collectively and externally. The message within my work is simple, no reaction is desired or expected. The action of reacting to the works themselves is the basis of the human condition.
I love committing to creative decisions in the moment. I think it leads to more cohesive and interesting works. You need to develop a level of self confidence in your creative decision in order to really feel comfortable this way but once you do, you don’t look back, restrictions breed creativity. When working with sound I love to commit effects and processing to audio files in the moment to give myself the additional headspace of understanding how this sound fits into the broader film. Likewise, I always know that somewhere, in an older session I can find the raw audio should I ever need it. Although I rarely find myself doing that now days.
They call South Africa the ‘rainbow nation’, and I don’t think you could sum up the countries culture better. Whilst it is often said we exist within a post-modern society I think South African arts culture is more like a primordial soup, fusing worlds, cultures and heritages as a common occurrence.
Aesthetically many aspects of South African culture interest me, especially the tribal influence of South African art. I have always loved the bold colours and shapes of traditional Ndebele hut painting, bead work and textile patterning. This has had an impact not only in my visual preferences of bold colours and defined geometric lines. But sonically within my sound design work I find myself drawn to sonic textures which are defined and strong yet somehow don’t feel abrupt and jarring. This is again reflected in my sonic influences, whistling and clicking both often used as methods of communication, purvey the sonic landscape of South Africa. The transient and sharp nature of these sounds brings a definitive certainty and commitment to the soundscape like few other sounds can achieve, at least in my personal context. This definitely can be felt and heard in my sound design work.
Being a ‘third culture child’ my art is itself a big melting pot of cultures and identities which in a way makes it feel even more South African than if I had simply lived in South Africa my whole life. It would be ingenuine to not acknowledge the huge influence Scottish and British art has had on myself, my practice and film work. I view this fusion of cultures as an extension of the South African ethos to post-modernist art. South African culture is rarely displayed outside of South Africa and the few things which do emerge from it into the mainstream fundamentally shape and change the scene rapidly. Much like a call and response. Whether you view this as a positive or negative is up to yourself, but it is very interesting to consider the rapid and post-modernist nature of South African arts. With all that being said whilst the arts may be rapid and evolving, they seem to retain an element of traditional feel, whether that be a bold colour pallet or traditional patterns. There is always a bit of South Africa to be seen in our arts exports, whether subtle or overt.
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