Blog

Working on "Subterranean" - for two Saxophones and a Slide Projector.

2/18/2015

The piece is inspired by one of the theories about why people created cave painting.
From "Paleolithic Cave Art in France, The Meanings and Conclusions of Paleolithic Cave Art Paintings and Rock Art":
"Wall images are perfectly compatible with the perceptions people could have during their visions, whether one considers their themes, their techniques and their details. The animals, individualised by means of precise details, seem to float on the walls ; they are disconnected from reality, without any ground line, often without respect of the laws of gravity, in the absence of any framework or surroundings. Elementary geometric signs are always present and recall those seen in the various stages of trance. As to composite creatures and monsters (i.e. animals with corporal attributes pertaining to various species), we know that they belong to the world of shamanic visions. This does not mean that they would have made their paintings and engravings under a state of trance. The visions could be drawn (much) later."

This documentary explains this theory:

In my piece, I describe the procedure of going into a trance and experience a vision.
For the "trance" part of the procedure I'm using repetitive patterns in the Saxophones and flashing images in the Slide projector. I made the images by drawing on the slide's glass with black pen. The Slide projector also functions as an instrument, and creates a fast pulse with percussive sound.

Gradually through the piece I develop the musical material together with the slides. The Saxophones part is based on the same pitch material through the whole piece, and the rhythmical patterns are based on the natural rhythm of the slide projector, in different modulations. For the slides in this section, I used again the black pen, as well as threads and film negatives.
Here are some images from the middle section:

For the last part, the Saxophones are slowing down - their patterns still based on the rhythmical modes of the slide projector. In this part I'm also using the "singing while playing" technique, to give more "human" feeling, for the final result - the vision.
For the slides I used negatives of color paintings, which I made being inspired by cave paintings. I
layered the negatives on top of each other and combined it with pieces of textile and black ink.

All that's left to do now is to wait for the first rehearsal and see how the visuals blend with the music - Is the image catches the eye more than the music catches the ear? or is it a whole audio-visual experience?

Busy with - "In-Line" for Ensemble and Video

1/3/2015