By
Thomas Connelly
Last
night I Went to the opening night of Sound to Light - Crossing
Borders (STL). As well as the exhibition, which runs until June 23 at
the Salamanca Arts Centre, I saw some audio/visual performances.
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| Image courtesy of www.soundtolight.net |
STL
is described as a dynamic, playful, chaotic, experimental project. A
social art project that seeks to transcend boundaries between
disciplines, but more importantly - and something that can only be
done at this time in history - seeks to transcend physical location.
This could not have been done before the invention of high-speed
networking. Like the ancient shamans who could be in two places at
once, nowadays artists are able to perform
bi-location. Optical fibre being part of the infrastructure of modern
shamanistic practice the name of the exhibit takes on a special
meaning.
Up
Woobys Lane, through the courtyard, into an industrial revolution
rabbit warren of an old warehouse. Low skeletal ceiling, silver
insulation skin exposed. Rendered sandstone,
convict-hewn
blocks, photographers moving about for a better composition. Pale
smart phone light, apparitions in the crowd, petals on a wet, black
night. Electronic equipment humming, buzzing a series of sounds and
beats, screens projecting the present and past in various
combinations. Strange generated life forms dancing and swirling. Art,
as Andy Warhol said, is anything you can get away with; and
everything we do, as John Cage said,
is
music.
Beyond
the large performance space, a series of connected rooms of various
installations. I would suggest visiting the www.soundtolight.net
website to get more detailed information about the artworks. I can
only describe my impressions, and what I saw. With much happening
not everything could be given the attention required, and not
everything can be properly critiqued.
In one
room amplifiers, wires and a small wooden table. On the table Oscar
Ferreiro & Heath Brown assembled small pieces of bone. The
geometry of innocent flesh with electronic widgets attached to clean
white bones. Small motors recorded, manipulated sounds filled the
little room. The natural and the artificial, prehistoric flutes made
of bone meshed with the most up to date technology. On a stand in a
hallway a simple music box, a
twin in Melbourne, moves so slowly that one can not detect any
movement. Played back as a time-lapse video the movement becomes
apparent, the structure is revealed.
Like
Chinese guerrillas and the peasant class, like fish in the sea, we
move through light and sound. Moving from room to room. Agreeing with
the Dickensian atmosphere of the old warehouse art gallery was a room
designed by Dylan Sheridan & Laura Hindmarsh.
This was
a flickering magic lantern room of images thrown onto thin screens in
the darkness. This created a melancholy feeling, of being a young
child, a poor Edwardian urchin, sneaking a peek into the nickelodeon.
Chris
Vik, of Ethno Tekh played his Kinectar. He has written some software
to interface with the Kinect sensor, allowing artists to create music
by gesture alone, wearing special gloves. A very cool idea indeed,
bringing sound to the language of gesture.
If Sound
to Light - Crossing Borders was meant to be a dynamic, playful,
chaotic, experimental social art project, then one is forced to admit
that they have succeeded. This type of technological art, this type
of social art, this type of shamanistic bi-location will only extend
and grow over the next period. In the way that the continual
revolution of capitalism is threatening many old style business
models, so too is the industrial scientific revolution forcing us to
revalue art and the production of art. Recalling Socrates and his
contrasting writing
to the living word of knowledge. So we must ask if technology is as
well, a pharmakon? Is technology a remedy? Or is it a poison? Or,
most likely, is it both at once?
Exhibition
June 16-23 10am-9pm SAC.
Presented
by Salamanca Arts Centre + Dark Mofo in association with 313RGB
