About

Giant Axe Field is a collaborative project formed in 2013 by artist Sean O’Keeffe and musician Simon Bailey to explore ideas around live and improvised audio-visual performance.

They make, appropriate and combine a range of AV source material, such as digital video from classic genres like science fiction and cinema fantastique, using it as a conceit and starting point from which to create interpolations and fictive juxtapositions.

Visual fragments, including image, dialogue, sound effects, ambient sound and existing score are manipulated, triggered and edited live using drums, bass and guitar and a range of digital software. The resulting semi-improvised performances confound and subvert the original sources, revealing phantom patterns and building shifting inter-connective structures that are added to, and interwoven with, additional composed or improvised sound.

Sean O’Keeffe studied Fine Art Printmaking, and spent 20 years teaching art and design before leaving to become a freelance project manager and focus on his practice in 2014. Simon Bailey studied music technology, works in retail and is a fledgling app developer. They began making and playing music together in 2002, playing bass and drums in My Imaginary Friend, and have collaborated on projects ever since.