IMAGES FROM DOCUMENTATION ONLY
Ensemble: Guitar, Video, Accordion and Cello
Musicians are visual staging while video recordings interrupt with the sound of nothing really happening. The noisy silence creates a shift in attention as the work listens to the space. It opens room for reflection. Co-existence becomes ping-pong and coincidence creates new movement thanks to an initial randomness of approach. Another-meaning-of-melancholy affects the process. Colour changes to image and focus changes from surface to depth...
This performative installation is a collaborative work by composer Peter Dowling and visual artist Karena Nomi. The work explores the boundaries between their respective practices and has initially evolved from an interest in how film/video based visual art and composition/live presentation of music can genuinely interact.
The staging and scene-setting are integral to the piece, offset by the spatialisation of the live electronics and the positioning of the musicians, the projector and the small screen within the context of the large (in comparison) performance space. The sound and image relate to each other emotively but not tightly structurally, matching each others' preoccupation with static, slow moving, imperceptibly changing motives and scenes. The small projection becomes a member of the ensemble, enlarging it to a quartet of co-existing entities. The stage 'business' (musicians, instruments, stands, microphones, performer movement, etc) becomes a living sculpture, rather than an aside to performance, thus significantly this is not 'music-theatre', but staged-performance / visual-sonic installation.
This QuickTime movie (a 3 min EXTRACT) documents a work-in-progress performance at Roskilde University, Denmark in 2006. Dowling and Nomi are continually fine polishing details in both imagery and score. This means that the timing and exact details of performance/installation has a certain amount of flexibility and can be adjusted to work in different exhibition contexts.