Saturday, June 28, 2008

Lomeglumiere # 017 "arrangement II"

click to play in Quicktime / or direct streaming at blip.tv
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A Lumierevideo by bk again shot just outside a window in Switzerland - 2008.06.17. Like in "Arrangement I" the view is also here completely arranged... and they're still arranging it actually... 'cause the mass has to be moved... over and over again. Principles; fixed camera, mounted on a balcony, no audio, no zoom, no effects and goin' on for exactly 60'' (65'' with credits).
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b.k.: lumierevideo 017 for lomeg-rom.blogspot.com - 65''
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4 comments:

Gurdonark said...

A great lumiere. 60 seconds is just right. A John Cage quality to it.

LOMEG_ROM said...

Or it could become a voodle with one of gurdonark's sinuate ambient soundscapes on... I wonder how your synth-interpretation of a 'cran in an arranged landscape' would sound like. We found an impressive amount of your beautiful repand and fantastic unnotched scapes on ccmixter... maybe the cran is already there somewhere...

b.k./LOMEG_ROM

Gurdonark said...

Thanks for the kind words. I find myself drawn to the music of soundscapes. Brian Eno coined the term "ambient music", but its antecedents in Satie's furniture music and in DeBussy speak of a richer history, and perhaps a history not at all unconnected with the theory of voodles. Each uses its medium in an unconventional way to try to elicit from the audience/participant a new way of perceiving. Both forms are influenced by the same literary figures. I like, too, reading of any cross-pollination of 20th Century music and art, as with the impact Schoenberg had upon Der Blaue Reiter artists.

Lately, a new friend in Spain has set me the delightful task of writing miniature soundtracks to
very short videos of birds feeding at a feeder. What can one write in 24 seconds to convey a mood or idea? One some level it is audio lumiere that is the product--the "camera" cannot quite be "fixed" in a "potted plant", but in a few bars in which not much can happen, the entire story must be told.

I am not truly a devotee of Jarry, being attracted to new perceptions on different grounds, but there is something to be said for this quote from Jarry:

"Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations."

Isn't that what so many of us in this new and growing minority are trying to do? To creat a music--a film--a text that is not merely a
prelude to a predicted applause, but a different kind of experience in the first instance.

LOMEG_ROM said...

Yes, probably, this is what we try to do … and hoping for the best while doing it… doing it and getting excited about it!!

It is very interesting to read about the references made by you.

The Lumieres called Arrangement I+II, untitled I+II+II and the one called video painting were really meant as homage on Brian Eno’s ‘14 video paintings’.
Yet, while Eno produced real ‘mistaken memories of mediaeval manhattan’ with 'the help' of a malfunctioning and mal-positioned video camera... I could hide behind the rules of the lumiere, trying to produce the video painting within the single frame and the choice on the timeline. I like the results… it is like inventing TV again – ‘after not having seen it ever’.

Eno had recorded his first footage with his very first video camera (the famous Panasonic industrial colour video camera) by unknowingly putting it on his window sill in a ninety degree angle to what the frame was supposed to be. He then had to turn his TV ninety degrees in order to watch his recordings ‘the right side up’. He says that he liked the ‘new’ format much better and soon discovered that he also liked to watch regular TV keeping his tele in that ‘wrong position’.

That Eno in addition managed to destroy the ‘true’ colour of his camera by exposing its lens for several hours to direct sunlight has created a truly marvellous and completely open work – somewhere between paintings (I even think I did read somewhere about a comparison to Kandinsky), video art, television and pixelated furniture music.

The LOMEG_ROM lumieres mentioned here are humble homage’s on that work… I actually believe that any attempt to create something with video while thinking on those 14 video paintings is doomed to fail. So, I have failed but I had all the fun while doing and viewing it.


I would very much like to hear (or view?) your interpretation of birds feeding at a feeder…!

b.k./LOMEG_ROM