The first two premiere nights of See Hear Now! at the REDCAT were decidedly uneven. The main problem with the show was its connection to the Visual Music exhibition currently up at MOCA across the street. Its insistence on the combination of visual and music often left a lot to be desired. Most times one element of the mix is strong while the other is questionable.
The first night opens with Chessmachine, a collaboration with Richard Chartier and Ivan Pavlov [aka CoH]. I have enjoyed Chartier's work in the past, and the sounds produced by the duo was nothing short of inspired. Sound synthesis, microsounds, and glitch dominated the compositions. The video installation by Evelyn Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand that was paired with the performance could have been more seamlessly integrated. While one had the sense that the visual was mimicking the chess-playing form of the performance, the video appeared to have been recorded earlier and not in real time.
In the second half of the night, Carter Tutti made their appearance with what I would say was more of a pop performance. Their electronic compositions were such that every elements were so calculated to have sounded interesting. But, of course, it came out the totally opposite. "Acceptable music" indeed. The video was also much of the same, with wonderful interesting visuals, most of which reminded me of watching Nam Jun Paik, but much more psychedelic.
Night two opened with the collaborations with composer William Basinski and filmmaker James Elaine. Pualine Oliveros coined the phrase "deep listening," and the two films/sound compositions can perhaps fall into that category. The second film, the longer of the two, indeed forces one to be attentive as its subject of small reflectors comes in and out of focus, as the composition by Basinki played in unison. One does not want to call this an "ambient film," because by that one implies the film is there as a part of the everyday, something one can ignore. It is rather through concerned viewing that one will arrive at the pleasures of watching the film.
As I have said before, the programs for the first two nights were decidedly mixed. Nothing can illustrate this more than the second act of night two. The collaboration between Tom Recchion and filmmaker Johnathon Rosen was uneven. As it turned out, the piece seemed like some possibly interesting music and sounds set to a bad film, with its subjects of life, death, and possibly rebirth. Goth images dominated the film, not to mention an unusually dominant number of clips of nude women. After awhile, I had to wonder how I was supposed to have taken in the film.
The saving grace came in the last performance by Skoltz_Kolgen. Fluux:/Terminal was a perfect elaboration of what the purpose of the show seemed to have been: A perfect mix of visual and sound/music. Performing on their laptops, as did most of the performers in this series, the duo mixed the electronic sounds in sync with the visual. As the sound vibrated, the graphics reacted to the same. This piece is perhaps the best illustration of what one can do at the moment with the current technology. This ability to arrive at a dance between sonic/image in real time [with tools like MAX/MSP and Jitter, or PD/GEM/Framestein], is what I believe the future of "visual music" will be.
Next Friday's line up will feature Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender of Raster-Noton. Knowing what the outputs from the label are like, it should be an interesting show.
