29 April 2012
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the first part is musarc singing in a large gallery space, standing in a circle, facing inward with audience scattered around us, their backs the the wall. our conductor, cathy heller jones, instructs us to synchronise record on the dictaphones.
the second part of the performance begins when we stop singing and stop recording, rewind, press play, set the dictaphone at our feet and disperse into the audience. we assumed pseudo-formal poses while we, along with the audience, listened back to the tapes. the out-of-sync tapes satanic or at least darkly-heavenly tone. the performance ends when the last tape reaches the end.
corpus sonus is a revisited version of william byrd's ave verum corpus. the original concept of this revisit was introduced by the talented sam belinfonte with contributions from Original idea by Sam Belinfante with contributions from Toby O’Connor, Cathy Heller Jones, Maria Smith, John Bingham-Hall, Esther Waterfield, Joseph Kohlmaier, Hannes Voss, Mela Boev and the ensemble. musarc performed this new commission at margate's turner contemporary gallery, on occasion of the gallery's first birthday.
www.musarc.org
Labels: byrd, experiment, musarc, music, performance
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19 February 2012
above : "The high speed flash head was tested for 700 shots, one every 5 seconds, to detect irregularities in Flash power and light characteristics" from vimeo page description of the fascinating digital mediators factum arte
"the idea that i might already have gone blind struck me with sudden terror.... i might only be using people's words and voices to reconstruct the lost world of reality, just as our mind, at the moment we fall asleep, forms images resembling those of real life from the phosphenes that dance before our closing eyes. i stood on the threshold of reality and imagination, and i began to doubt which was which"
Figyes Karinthy [2008] Journey Round My skull. New york: nyrb classicsas quoted in oliver sacks [2010] The Mind's Eye, Picador, London, p180
"How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events — that I am here in my dressing gown, sitting by the fire —when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep."
Rene Descartes [1641] Meditations on First Philosophy
as quoted in christopher grau's short essay dream skepticism
right : "Simulation of panoramic heads position and movement during recording: camera head and follow-on high speed flash head" from vimeo page descriptions of factum arte
Labels: conservation, descartes, dreams, experiment, history, light, oliversacks, photography, quote, vision
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