ARTISTS: Various Artists
TITLE: Optofonica (LINE_041)
FORMAT: DVD (DIGIPAK + 52 PAGE COLOR BOOK IN EMBOSSED SLIPCASE) PAL/REGION FREE
RELEASE: NOVEMBER 17, 2009
LIMITED EDITION: 1000
Instead of creating mere objects of aesthetic seduction, a new form of art is surfacing that invites audiences to transcend the limits of habitual perception. It seeks to shift the observer's attention from the physical objects that stimulate perception to the act of perception itself.
"Concurrent with the cognitive space of apprehended sounds, a separate view can be opened onto the physical life of waves."
(R. Ganchrow, Hear and There: Notes on the Materiality of Sound)
The immersive environments presented here by 42 artists from 13 different countries incite a unique multi-sensory awareness of both physical and mental (imagined) space. Some works directly examine the slipping contours of kinetic phenomena, involving magnetism (Kanta Horio), fluid dynamics (Skoltz Kolgen), or acoustic levitation (Domnitch/Gelfand/Chartier). Others have invented an impossible phantom spatiality, stemming, for example, from brain wave interference (Ulf Langheinrich) or stereoscopically rendered interferential video signals (Bas van Koolwijk). All the pieces entail a search for hidden, transitory spaces that crosswire the perceptual spectrum. After being presented worldwide (Sonic Acts, Elektra, Sonar, Nemo...) in the form of Surround Cinema as well as in the Optofonica Capsule (a tactile audio installation), this body of work, spanning 3 years, has been painstakingly archived, preserving as much as possible the intricacies of each composition.
EVELINA DOMNITCH + DMITRY GELFAND + RICHARD CHARTIER / sonolevitation / 6.28
TELCOSYSTEMS / scapetime / 7:57
RYAN JEFFERY + SCANNER / waterfall / 6:53
RYOICHI KUROKAWA / vento ignis / 4:07
KANTA HORIO / em#3 / 7:51
JASON GRAHAM + KIM CASCONE + TEZ / raindrops #7 / 6:01
SKOLTZ_KOLGEN / ether / 3:51
KAFFE MATTHEWS / mount magnet / 6:37
MARCEL WIERCKX / black noise white silence / 3:00
MARTIJN VAN BOVEN / a thousand scapes / 10:01
OTOLAB / animula / 8:00
RAYXXXX / pulse / 7:20
LIA + @C / study #40 / 9:47
BAS VAN KOOLWIJK / fdbck/av 3d / 6:02
FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER / rhythm exp. / 5:14
DOMENICO SCIAJNO / sgf / 7:02
PE LANG + ZIMOUN / untitled sound objects / 0:47
ULF LANGHEINRICH / it would have been fantastic / 5:05
QUAYOLA + MIRA CALIX + AUTOBAM / strata #2 / 7:12
SKIF++ / skif++ / 4:52
DAVID MUTH & HIAZ / counterclockwise / 2:04
KURT HENTSCHLAGER / xscape / 7:01
NATALIE BEWERNITZ + MAREK GOLDOWSKI / life at the witch trails / 10:06
total time: 2:23:18
Instead of creating mere objects of aesthetic seduction, a new form of art is surfacing that invites audiences to transcend the limits of habitual perception. It seeks to shift the observer’s attention from the physical objects that stimulate perception to the act of perception itself. Immersivity awakens a multi-sensory awareness of both physical and mental space.
Founded in 2006 by artist and producer TeZ, Optofonica is a platform for immersive art-science situated in Amsterdam (NL). The works presented on this DVD (in 5.1 surround and stereo sound options) were commissioned by Optofonica to stimulate the combined research of sound spatialization and synesthetic immersion.
Due to the detailed visual nature of this work we have chosen to use PAL over NTSC encoding to maintain the maximum resolution possible for the movie and sound files. This DVD is region free and can be played on any computer DVD drive. No region switching is necessary for television screen viewing, it can only playback on a PAL or multi-system DVD player.
Optofonica #1 was assembled by curator, TeZ and is produced by Optofonica in collaboration with LINE and with the support of ARCADI (Action régionale pour la création artistique et la diffusion en Île-de-France) and FONDS BKVB.
REVIEWS:
Optofonica: A new and impressive DVD/Book combo has just been released by 12K/Line and it is an essential for anyone out there following contemporary sonic cinema art. With videos by several artists I’ve worked with including Portland’s own Ryan Jeffery (in his second collaboration with Scanner), Frank Bretschneider, Richard Chartier, Pe Lang + Zimoun and Skoltz_Kolgen among others. One of those others is Kanta Horio who was featured in PICA’s TBA Festival a few years back, it’s great to see his em#3 once again! Inside the full color book is an essay by Cretien van Campen who also wrote The Hidden Sense, Synethesia in Art and Science (MIT Press, 2007). Black Noise White Silence by Marcel Wierckx alone is brilliant. Get your copy of this limited edition before it vanishes into the thin air we have left…
(TJ Norris, unBLOGGED)
Can we give some kind of award to Line overseer Richard Chartier for ensuring that material of this rarefied and elaborately presented kind—especially in such fragile economic times—finds it way into the marketplace? Though issued in a run of only 1000 copies, the deluxe release perpetuates Line's high standards by packaging its DVD case and fifty-two-page full-colour booklet within an embossed slipcase—an embarrassment of riches, visually speaking. On Optofonica, Optofonica, a platform for art-science situated in Amsterdam and founded in 2006 by TeZ, presents two-and-a-half hours of twenty-three video-sound projects (involving forty-two artists from thirteen different countries) of the synaesthetic kind you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else. It also makes for an incredible headphones listening experience, especially when the Surround Sound option is selected. In some cases, a piece pairs a visual artist and a sound artist; in other cases, the work is the product of a single individual or outfit.
Some pieces naturally turn out to be more memorable than others, including Marcel Wierckx's "Black Noise White Silence," a three-minute, achromatic blizzard of eruptive convulsions and rapidly fluttering forms; Otolab's "Animula," which pairs animation suggestive of caged electronic fireflies and clangorous buzzing and combustion; and Rayxxxx's dizzying "Pulse," which conjoins jagged, stroboscopic shapes to rubbery techno-like rhythms. In the mesmerizing "Rhythm Exp.," Frank Bretschneider brings his meticulous rhythmning to a beautifully spare display of snowy dot galaxies. In Quayola, Mira Calix, and Autobam's "Strata #2," a spectral setting in a 'holy minimalism' vein, piano and orchestral elements (horns, strings) provide a jarring but not unwelcome change in musical style from the release's predominating style; the piece is as striking visually in depicting shards extending out of stain glass windows and in synchronizing them to the electronic intrusions—a bold merging of the medieval and the modern in audio and video terms.
Also noteworthy is "Waterfall," a collaborative piece by Ryan Jeffery and Scanner, which laces a mini-soundtrack by Robin Rimbaud of synthetic whooshes and Japanese voices with menace and paranoia while visually alternating between the illuminated interior of a night-time office and the amplified crackle of tree branches. Ulf Langheinrich's vaporous drone “It Would Have Been Fantastic” shows a dust storm of white particles morphing into a flickering blue-dominated colour field display; David Muth & Hiaz's "Counterclockwise" configures transluscent veils into fan-like displays; and Kanta Horio's "Em#3"—talk about minimalism!— deploys magnetism to direct tiny nail-like rods, whose rapid motion generates magnified noise, along hard surfaces. Relatedly, "Sonolevitation" by Evelina Domnitch, Dmitry Gelfand, and Chartier shows flat, vertically aligned shapes suspended in mid-air with a droning field of sine tones and whirrs as accompaniment. "Raindrops #7" by Jason Graham, Kim Cascone, and Tez pairs rivulets of rain on windows with the kind of creeping digital sounds—like factory sounds ricocheting through the galaxy—one associates with Cascone.
There's more, of course, with contributions coming from Skoltz_Kolgen, Martijn Van Boven, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Kurt Hentschlager, and Natalie Bewernitz and Marek Goldowski (whose "Life at the Witch Trails" deserves a prize for best title). In certain cases, yes, the audio portion delivers pretty much what one would expect—granular, glitch-laden material where melody is absent, rhythm surfaces rarely, and textural sculpting is paramount—but the release (whose works span three years) features enough captivating audio-visual synchronicities to earn its recommendation (in a perfect world, there'd be page numbers included in the booklet but even mentioning it seems churlish in light of what's provided).
(textura.org)
Marking another superb audio-visual project for 12k offshoot Line, this DVD brings together abstract visual and auditory imagery in order to "shift the observer's attention from the physical objects that stimulate perception to the act of perception itself." Not unlike the label's previous DVD, Colorfield Variations, this project aims to reassess connections between the senses of sight and sound. Among the assembled musicians/composers are such familiar names as Mira Calix, Frank Bretschneider, Kaffe Matthews, Skoltz_Kolgen, Scanner and Kim Cascone. First up comes a collaboration featuring Richard Chartier, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand called 'Sonolevitation'. It's a piece of film that shows thin pieces of metal suspended and spinning in the air between two large magnets while corresponding sound currents whir and pulse in a complex yet very hushed soundscape. Next, Telcosystems' 'Scapetime' is fconcerned with pure digital abstraction, very much in the tradition of Farmers Manual-style audio-visual experiments, made up from raw noise, colour and geometry. Although operating along similar lines sonically, Ryoichi Kurokawa accompanies his glitching digitised sound experiments with hair formations that writhe around, change colour and flicker onscreen according to whatever's going on with the sound. Kanta Horio's 'EM 3' appears to be a more naturally synchronous combination of sound and vision: electromagnetic forces manipulate the motion of a pin on a surface, jerking and scratching around as it moves, acquiring the company of other small parts as the duration goes on. In a not dissimilar fashion, Pe Lang + Zimoun's 'Untitled Sound Objects' captures a large number of small, robot-like mechanical devices all scurrying around the frame while tactile noises jangle in the ears. Tapping into the current obsession with all things 3D, Bas Van Koolwijk offers 'fdbck/av 3d'. Glasses aren't included, but if you had them you'd be able to see violent static interference getting all up in your face while the sound of faulty connections dances between your ears. The reliably brilliant Frank Bretschneider is also on hand to marry his marvellous nano-beat compositions with a flutter of beautifully arranged dots, creating something incredibly ornate that has all the feel of a single entity rather than a multimedia project. Entirely different from all of this is the Quayola + Mira Calix + Autobam effort 'Strata 2', whose neo-classical piano and string tones accompany the digital fragmentation of a stained glass window. Most peculiar, but quite spectacular too. Probably the most formidable and ambitious Line mixed media project to date, the Optofonica DVD has a total running time that's not far off two-and-a-half hours and comes in both stereo and 5.1 mixes. Highly recommended.
(boomkat, UK)
Showcasing 23 artists over almost two and a half hours of audio-visual work from Optofonica, the "platform for synesthetic media and sound spatialization", this new LINE not only is a broad survey of the form, but carries the lofty ideal opening "new doors of perception." Founded by Italian multimedia artist TeZ, Optofonica has been commissioning media works wince 2006, with the aim of evolving a new way to perceive the combination of sound and vision. While this DVD compilation includes a few that fail to stray far from the conventions of music as abstract soundtrack or video as media player visualization, and others for which the transfer to domestic viewing diminishes their impact, there is much that impresses. The simplicity of James Graham + Kim Cascone + TeZ's work "Raindrops #7" recalls the spirit of Marie Menken in its collage of themed image set against a background of lo-fi interference, and there is humor in Kanta Horio's "em#3" as a metal nail enacts a ritual dance to the swoops of a since tone. Natalie Bewernitz + Marek Goldowski and Skif++ both create evocative visual renderings of complex sounds —noise, tones and feedback—where the visual deconstruction adds an elevating new level to the aural experience, but it is only when any literal narrative is abandoned that the doors of new perception begin to creak open. In Ulf Langheinrich's "it would have been fantastic", a wall of modulated out-of-focus visual white noise is pitched against ever denser clouds of sound, creating a sublime sensory overload, which, like staring at the inside of your eyelids, lets the mind wander unchecked.
(The Wire, UK)
It’s a stunning hybrid of experimental video and music, a compilation that you can listen to, watch, do both with, or just throw on in the background like a screensaver. And since it’s a limited edition of 1,000 copies, you’ll probably have to make up your mind sooner rather than later what you’d like to do with it... The whole project's the brainchild of "artist and producer TeZ", an Amsterdam native who’s managed to collect a few big names (Scanner, Richard Chartier, Kim Cascone) and a whole slew of unfamiliar ones to participate in this project. Each of them have provided a track mixed in both 5.1 surround and conventional 2.0 stereo (you choose which version you want when you boot the DVD), and while some of them do veer kinda close to glorified-screensaver territory, there are just as many that command your attention and your thought quite ably. If the video doesn’t do it for you, look at it this way: you're still getting 2 hours and 23 minutes of deeply absorbing audio... Every track has something fascinating going on, even if only in miniature... The best thing I can say about Optofonica is something that sounds like a cliché: I've never seen or heard anything like it. But in this case the cliché's completely spot-on: I really haven't seen anything like it. I doubt you have, either. Anyone remotely interested in experimental video or film should seek it out. You can fight me for my copy.
(musiquemachine.com)