Can we give some kind of award to Line overseer
Richard Chartier for ensuring that material of this rarefied and
elaborately presented kind—especially in such fragile economic
times—finds it way into the marketplace? Though issued in a run of only
1000 copies, the deluxe release perpetuates Line's high standards by
packaging its DVD case and fifty-two-page full-colour booklet within
an embossed slipcase—an embarrassment of riches, visually speaking. On Optofonica,
Optofonica, a platform for art-science situated in Amsterdam and
founded in 2006 by TeZ, presents two-and-a-half hours of twenty-three
video-sound projects (involving forty-two artists from thirteen
different countries) of the synaesthetic kind you'd be hard pressed to
find anywhere else. It also makes for an incredible headphones listening
experience, especially when the Surround Sound option is selected. In
some cases, a piece pairs a visual artist and a sound artist; in other
cases, the work is the product of a single individual or outfit.
Some pieces naturally turn out to be more
memorable than others, including Marcel Wierckx's “Black Noise White
Silence,” a three-minute, achromatic blizzard of eruptive convulsions
and rapidly fluttering forms; Otolab's “Animula,” which pairs animation
suggestive of caged electronic fireflies and clangorous buzzing and
combustion; and Rayxxxx's dizzying “Pulse,” which conjoins jagged,
stroboscopic shapes to rubbery techno-like rhythms. In the mesmerizing
“Rhythm Exp.,” Frank Bretschneider brings his meticulous rhythmning to a
beautifully spare display of snowy dot galaxies. In Quayola, Mira
Calix, and Autobam's “Strata #2,” a spectral setting in a ‘holy
minimalism' vein, piano and orchestral elements (horns, strings) provide
a jarring but not unwelcome change in musical style from the release's
predominating style; the piece is as striking visually in depicting
shards extending out of stain glass windows and in synchronizing them to
the electronic intrusions—a bold merging of the medieval and the modern
in audio and video terms.
Also noteworthy is “Waterfall,” a
collaborative piece by Ryan Jeffery and Scanner, which laces a
mini-soundtrack by Robin Rimbaud of synthetic whooshes and Japanese
voices with menace and paranoia while visually alternating between the
illuminated interior of a night-time office and the amplified crackle of
tree branches. Ulf Langheinrich's vaporous drone “It Would Have Been
Fantastic” shows a dust storm of white particles morphing into a
flickering blue-dominated colour field display; David Muth & Hiaz's
“Counterclockwise” configures transluscent veils into fan-like displays;
and Kanta Horio's “Em#3”—talk about minimalism!—deploys magnetism to
direct tiny nail-like rods, whose rapid motion generates magnified
noise, along hard surfaces. Relatedly, “Sonolevitation” by Evelina
Domnitch, Dmitry Gelfand, and Chartier shows flat, vertically aligned
shapes suspended in mid-air with a droning field of sine tones and
whirrs as accompaniment. “Raindrops #7” by Jason Graham, Kim Cascone,
and Tez pairs rivulets of rain on windows with the kind of creeping
digital sounds—like factory sounds ricocheting through the galaxy—one
associates with Cascone.
There's more, of course, with contributions
coming from Skoltz_Kolgen, Martijn Van Boven, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Kurt
Hentschlager, and Natalie Bewernitz and Marek Goldowski (whose “Life at
the Witch Trails” deserves a prize for best title). In certain cases,
yes, the audio portion delivers pretty much what one would
expect—granular, glitch-laden material where melody is absent, rhythm
surfaces rarely, and textural sculpting is paramount—but the release
(whose works span three years) features enough captivating audio-visual
synchronicities to earn its recommendation (in a perfect world, there'd
be page numbers included in the booklet but even mentioning it seems
churlish in light of what's provided).
- Optofonica (2009) - 320 Kbps
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