Donovan Dynamics
Signed and Titled · Installation

Secrets You Told Me

James Donovan1 min

Secrets You Told Me was made in the spring of 2012 by a collective of five people, and I was one of them.

It is a pyramid of black fabric, lined inside with mirrors and cut open with slits. To see in, you bend down and put your face to an opening. Inside, the mirrors fold the view back on itself.

Looking down through a narrow opening between black fabric walls into a mirrored interior full of bright, broken reflections.
The mirrors inside.
A close view into the pyramid's mirrored interior, cold white light scattered across angled reflective faces.
Inside the pyramid.

The sound

Renzo Vitale wrote a four-hour algorithmic composition for the piece, in six movements of forty minutes each, drawn from the secrets of each member of the collective.

Gemma's Secret: Gemma Fleming listens to the composition, May 2012.

The opening

The photographs from the opening, on 18 May 2012, show people crouched at the slits, leaning in to look.

The pyramid in near darkness, its mirrored interior glowing through the openings.
The pyramid lit from inside.

Photographs, 2012

A diamond-shaped slit of light on the black pyramid.The foil interior, fluid-coated limbs and white streaks.The lit base with mounds of white powder before filling.A fluid-coated back seen between mirror panels.Hands pulling through thick white fluid.A slit in the black fabric showing mirrors inside.Limbs crossing in white fluid, the mirror walls lit.The pyramid's glowing opening in a dark room.The dismantled mirror and black panels against a wall.A visitor, seen from behind, looking into the mirrors.Installing the LED strip inside.A hand reaching up through the frame and fabric.V-shaped slits glowing in the dark.A notebook sketch of the sound diagram, 5 July 2012.Fluid-drenched arms on the white floor.

All 11 in Signed and Titled