Solina Hi-Fi - Campfire

Solina Hi-Fi - 'Campfire'

Performance at Open File; 'Echoes (disambiguation)'

Nov 2011

Solina Hi-Fi performed Campfire as part of Echoes (disambiguation), Open Files' first event in the Grand Union series, 2011. 

The performance consisted of mapping the resonant frequencies present in the gallery space using a sensitive microphone, and playing them back through a sound-system. As the same frequencies resonanted in the space and multiplied it creates a strange density of sound and pressure whilst not becoming loud. Five Hanterex monitors were positioned in the space and programmed to shift colour as the pitch and density of sound altered. 

For more information about the Solina HiFi and the performance please visit our website here 

"Camp Fire looks simply to weave, inextricably, aural and visual elements into a cohesive momentary experience. An experiment using oscillations, sound as well as colour, of varying pitches and playing the geometry of the space in which the performance takes place.

Measurements of the space, in which the performance takes place, are put through simple equations. The resulting numbers determine sets of frequencies relevant to the space and the performance.

These frequencies in multiples, when applied back to the space from which they came, should yield further as yet undetermined frequencies as they navigate the room.

Traveling, reflecting and crossing paths, the wavelengths radiate governed by the mathematical dynamics of the space.

A microphone picks up ambient resonant frequencies and distills them giving a single mean result. Video monitors, as they display this result as a mathematically transposed frequency of colour, also provide a physical focus not devoid of its subject."

Liz Rhodes - Light Music

Liz Rhodes Light Music 

16 mm, 2 screens, 25 mins

1975

Liz Rhodes' 1975 installation Light Music is widely regarded as a classic of British Expanded Cinema. Utilising 2 16 mm film projectors placed directly opposite one another, the work uses the projectors' light beams to sculptural effect while translating the black and white visual content of the reels into sound. The variations in spacing adjust the tonal frequency, the thickness the amplitude, and the colour and density the tone.

Lis Rhodes has been a pioneer of British experimental film-making since the early '70s. An active member of the London Filmmakers' Co-op who went to found Circles, the first UK organization dedicated to distributing artists's film and video made by women. She lives and works in London.

Anthony McCall - Line Describing a Cone

Anthony McCall - Line Describing a Cone (1973)



Line Describing a Cone is probably one of McCall's most infamous works in his Solid Light series and has become iconic in the history of Avant-Garde film for the reduction of the medium to its bare essentials.

Over a 30 minute period a beam of light from a 16mm projector gradually draws out a circle on the wall opposite. As the room is filled with smoke the light coming from the projector is made solid and creates the illusion of a three dimensional cone in the space between the projector and the wall. Deconstructing the filmic medium to its apparatus, the audience are also shifted in their reception of the work. Viewers become participants, and as they move around the space their bodies are implicated in the creation and modification of the shapes made by light. Although simple in their nature, works from the Solid Light series involve a deep sensory involvement and create an overwhelming spatial experience, often separating it from other works in the Avant-Garde cannon.

Paul Sharits - N:O:T:H:I:N:G

Paul Sharits N:O:T:H:I:N:G
1968

A leading figure in the American Structural filmmaking group in the 1960s, Sharits' works reduce the process of filmmaking to its most basic components - the projector, the filmstrip, light and duration.

Sharit's explored the physical effects of rapidly changing light and colour in confrontational 'flicker' films; here chromatic frames are interspersed with an occasional image of a lightbulb or a chair. Structurally based on the chanting pattern in the Tibetan mandala of 'five Dyani Bouddhas', the frequency of the flicker rate in N:O:T:H:I:N:G rises to a central peak before receding in mirrored reverse of the original progression.

Utilising continuous loops, multiple projections, and experimenting with the spaces in which film could be seen, Sharits was a leading innovator in video installation and pioneering in his presentation of moving image in art spaces.