thehaar rolls into Dundee
12/01/2004
Writer Bill Duncan and visual artist Andy Rice have launched the first phase of their web-based collaborative project ‘thehaar’.
Using text, images and specially-commissioned sound, ‘thehaar’ merges the real, the mythical and the wildly imaginative in a North-East haar.
Phase 1 of ‘thehaar’ is now online, and Bill and Andy’s £20,000 award from the Scottish Arts Council’s New Media fund will enable them to develop Phase 2 and 3 over the next eighteen months. Future plans envisage a widening of the collaboration to involve a number of prominent musicians, artists and writers from the North-East of Scotland.
Bill and Andy describe their project as: ‘An ambitious, web-based environment based on an unsettling, hilarious and disorientating journey through the culture of an imagined post-fishing community.’
Gavin Wallace. Head of Literature at the Scottish Arts Council, commented: 'When artists of the calibre of Bill Duncan and Andy Rice embark on a creative collaboration, something spectacular is guaranteed. 'thehaar' is quite simply unique - powerful, haunting, arresting, subversive, strange - but above all, original. It arrests the attention and imagination at all levels. I'm delighted we have been able to support the project into even more exciting phases of growth.'
Bill Duncan is a widely-published writer whose collection ‘The Smiling School for Calvinists’ was published by Bloomsbury in 2002. Andy Rice is a freelance designer and artist whose acclaimed ‘Cod Requiem’ collaboration with Will Maclean formed part of the ‘Driftworks’ exhibition at DCA in 2002.
Notes to editors
- The Scottish Arts Council champions and sustains the arts for Scotland, investing £60 million from Scottish Executive and National Lottery funding to support and develop artistic excellence and creativity throughout Scotland. Further information is available on our website: www.scottisharts.org.uk.
Contact email(s)
michelle.jordan@scottisharts.org.uk
Issued by: Scottish Arts Council
|