Phase

Phase

[A programme of changing visuals with the live generation of a sonic response using AV Mixer Lite, Ableton Live, contact microphones and spontaneous instrumental performance]

There is a change from the classical composers’ use of the phrase in an almost speech like manner, to a minimalist composers use of phase, creating a much slower nuance of affect. The more fractured and atmospheric music is becoming, the less it has structure, emotion, content (instructions) and the more aesthetically pure it becomes, as the immediacy of temporal structured listening is slowed down allowing whole timbral colour to seep into the consciousness.

Argo recently composed synaesthetic, surround-sound works provoking specific psychoacoustic or physiological affects, as models to elucidate the neurology of music-listening, using synthesisers and digital animation to make the work seem uncanny flux between humanoid and robotic, like it is autonomously emerging from technology. She will re-assemble these audio-visual fragments in a sculptural arena of pivoting transparent screens, performing two diverse shows, one more quietly attentive in a cinematic format (11th), and the other more playful (12th), encouraging audience participation in the form of dance and invitation to instrumental improvisation.

The fused presentation of site responsive visual recordings (taken internationally to build up a bank of visually contrasting atmospheres) align the found rhythms of everyday choreography to a live program of minimal sonic beats – in turn suppressing narrative visual intrigue and creating an optimal setting for the purely sensorial perception of sonic, movement and visual compositions. As the viewer will see Argo perform a responsive audiovisual program, they make visual associations with the pulses and timbres of the music: the emphasis is on sensation; rather than origins or semantic links or narrative. The performance will feature many works from disparate sites and dates, and in a spontaneous order. Argo sees the bank of images as a nonsensical, irrational cloud of abstract images, through which she navigates on each performance; the unique combinatory sequence being played becoming a new work.