'scape' is an exploration of the different 'senses' of time inherent
in the representation of movement throug
h notes and images. Music and the technology of moving pictures share a common strategy that
facilitates the manipulation of time: discontinuity. The intervals
between notes on a paper and the frames on a film strip are what make these media such powerful tools; these intervals are what allows for montage, composition and orchestration.
A lot of the inspiration for 'scape' comes from the field of
chronophotography. To its inventors (Etienne-Jules Marey, Albert
Londe, Edweard Muybridge), chronophotography had a primarily
scientific meaning, its main aim being to refine human perception and come to an understanding of movement patterns. Their interest for movement brought them to observe and photograph humans and animals in motion, as well as movement in nature, such as waves or eclipses. They invented photographic systems that would allow a number of pictures to be taken in a short space of time. These resulted in a series of images that recorded an event, its temporal phases, mechanisms and duration. By revealing to the human eye what had been so far beyond its perceptive capacity, they caused a reorganization of what we percieve as speed. These inventions were precursors to the invention of cinema, and of all developments in moving image technology since.
The structure of 'scape' puts this discontinuity at the heart of the
piece by the way it is built up out of short fragments. The music and
sound of the composition is focused on exploring perceptions of
movement in space by relating directly to visual information and
animating this through time. In every fragment the frequency
relationship between music and image is differently defined, as is
the tempo and the number of permutations of images and musical
material. In this way the 15 piece orchestra De Volharding combined
with live electronics forms a tightly knit whole with the fragments
of animated images. Sounds are spatially distributed, creating
illusions of movement. Images are broken up in time, frame by frame, and recomposed in a play of shifting speeds and rhythms.
Aside from being inspired by the world of chronophotograpy, 'scape'
is also a comment on its imagery. There is a strong sense of power
that inhabits the images of Marey, Londe and Muybridge; theirs was a mechanical eye with unheard of analytical capabilities, strongly
suggestive of a visual truth, essentially modernist in its
aspirations. This sense of power is caused by the way the research
subject is cut from its background, sometimes even abstracted from
its own shape and reduced to a moving set of joints. The modernism
becomes especially poignant in the anthropological 'research' of
Marey and later investigations into the efficiency of assembly line
workers.
In 'scape' the figure - the human figure in the images as well as the
figure of the soloist in the orchestra - is always taken in
relationship to its ground. In the animated images the camera moves,
thus making the 'figure' move relative to its background and thus
making the camera a participant in the action instead of a
transparent observer. In the animated images the tools of
chronophotograpy are used to show these relationships between figure
and ground; between inhabitants and the city, tourists and their
surroundings, animals and nature. The frame edits shapes and
trajectories through cityscapes and landscapes. Framed in the
'scape', reframed in the picture, human and animal presence become an
indication of scale and time.
5 performances: KORZO (Den Haag) - Huis aan de Werf (Utrcht) Paradiso (Amsterdam)
