Visuals for Muted Fnord
Mon, 09 Apr 2012
I did some new visuals for the band Muted Fnord on Thursday night. It's not something I do so much of these days, but they asked and I like their sound so thought I'd say yes. It also gave me an opportunity to experiment with some new visual ideas that I plan to incorporate in to some future interactive artworks.
i went back to a visual style that I used to use when I did live visuals for Zion Train ten or so years ago - that is, mixing line drawings and schematics with live and processed video. It always appealed to me aesthetically, and it still seems relevant to my current work, which is often about the different ways we can see the world - be it in a reductionist way (where everything is broken down in to parts and labled) or in a system-like way (where the world is seen a unified whole of interacting parts).
The raw materials I used included a sequence of video clips I recorded at Leicester market, slowed down and abstracted until only the colours and rhythms of the movement remain, plus botanical drawings of plants, anatomical drawings of the human skeleton and schematics of machines. I then added an image of the Emperor Julian II that I scanned from a 1,500 year-old roman coin and a quote about the world being "one living thing" that came from a translation his writings. The whole lot was then mixed live using one of my sound responsive Max/MSP/Jitter patches.
Of course, I didn't expect anyone at the show to pick up on all of these elements, but I think it make for an interesting visual mix and the feedback seemed positive.
I think that the next versions of my Memory Mirror artworks will include some of these elements, indeed I've already been surreptitious placing the image of Julian around Leicester so that when I come to use it in a installation piece it will have a subtle familiarity! Get a free badge from here if you like.
A collection of stills can be found here on Flickr and there is a 15 minute video clip of Muted Fnord playing accompanied by the visuals here on YouTube.
