serial consign

[des cailloux et du carbone / nuit avant 2007 / photo: erin lewis]

I have been meaning to post a recap of one of my favourite aspects of the Nuit Avant event we co-curated with the Music Gallery earlier this fall. The show allowed Vague Terrain to invite two of our peers, Patricia Rodriguez and Noir (aka Rachel Vulliens) to collaborate on a live video performance alongside CONTACT Contemporary Music and Des Cailloux et Du Carbone. The collaboration proved to yield some very interesting work as both Patricia and Rachel have rather distinct relationships with film, software and live video.

A personal favourite moment of the evening took place during CONTACT's performance of Two Pages, a Philip Glass composition from 1968. During this extended performance, the duo manipulated footage of a passing subway which was shot from the side. In the clip, a train would enter the right of the frame, speeding towards the other side. Before the train could really get anywhere, the loop would almost immediately reset creating a flickering tension that perfectly suited the nervous anticipation one experiences when listening to Glass' early work. There was a looseness to this looping, and I sat rapt in suspense wondering if the train would ever get halfway across the frame. Being the music-nerd that I am, I read the clip as a visual pun and all I could think about as the 18 minute piece washed over me was Steve Reich's Different Trains.

One of the interesting aspects of Patricia and Rachel's collaboration is that their performance was built from the ground up. The duo utilized Patricia's extensive archive of urban & rural footage and complemented that with some new material the pair shot in Switzerland this summer. Over the last few years Rachel has worked quite closely with Greg Hermanovic and Markus Heckmann in refining the Touch platform for live performance and a custom interface (screen capture pictured above) was prototyped specifically for the performance.

[patricia rodriguez & noir / multi-screen panoramas / 2007]

It is actually quite difficult to describe the flavour of Patricia and Rachel's performance that night, broadly speaking, it dealt with finding (and inserting) narratives in dilapidated urban and pristine elemental imagery. I'm really hoping the pair continue to collaborate as they now have the Atlantic Ocean between them.

If you're interested in learning more about Patricia check out Pattycake, her healthy baking blog and Substance Communications, a design studio run with her partner Crispin Bailey. Rachel is currently in Switzerland working on a documentary project; she recently interviewed Peter Mettler (another Touch enthusiast) for the last issue of Vague Terrain. I'll definitely be posting about both of these artists in the future.