About

POP JONES is the home to my creative work. I work as an experimental sound composer, a filmmaker, and a sculptor. I build devices of metal, wood, and paper controlled by electronics (generative light and sound systems). Patterns in image, light, and sound are key elements in my sculptures—recall your childhood memories of red and yellow circus colors, rusting metal playground rides, the infinite spiraling of barber poles, and your mother’s breathing.

My interest is in systems theory so I treat each work, even narrative, as a system. Since a system might not have a conventional physical form, I am looking at anthropomorphic forms as structures to explore. ‘They’ (lol) can be programmed to exhibit, grace, frustration, attitude (lip), and even sociopathy (due to libel laws I can’t name them after my enemies, but I can withhold love and attention from them). We can respond to these devices with affection, scorn, neglect, and perhaps empathy. “How do you program empathy,” is an interesting question.

Thus my strong interest in robots as art. Lying, crippled robots. Robots who you can't trust. Dancing robots with bad knees and a drinking problem. What’s the difference between a robot character and a liar? We all love Bowie, but we wouldn't let him babysit for our kids.

My current BIG PROJECT is a network of 16 sculptures who improvise music with each other, and react musically to dancers and visitors. This project is called Vesselalia, a portmanteau of vessel and glossolalia. Visitors play the devices via their proximity. Hopeful side effects are joy, laughter, ridiculous behavior.

My film work has been shown on PBS, toured the South and shown at festivals and universities. My sculpture and photography has been exhibited across the South and is in private collections around the country.

I am working on a couple of folk operas—the first, Hellbendr, based on the 1940 floods in rural North Carolina (currently being repeated down here by the hurricanes and climate disasters of late stage capitalism). The sound environment is a blend of bluegrass/traditional and pointillism like the pulse of the minimalist composers—the chop chop chopping of trees, the flow of water water water music; dancers mountainclogging, sinuous ballet, and medicine stick ritual. The opera embraces a sophisticated South. What does Nature have to say about all this? Maybe nothing, maybe it's ineffable.

The other opera is Olo, a myth of transition from amphibian (the same from Hellbendr) to human and then to spirit.

I live on a river in the mountains of North Carolina. The river features prominently in my work, and that is likely to continue.