Bones at ISEA 2024 – The International Symposium on Electronic Art

An audio visual installation by Peter Thiedeke, Chris Stover, and John Ferguson

We re-begin with two ideas: breath as an elemental human life-function (which is also how sound is produced on the trombone) and the materiality of the instrument itself. Importantly, we are not considering the instrument in the abstract, but rather a particular instrument, a 1956 New York Bach Stradivarius model 8, serial number 5620. This instrument displays the physical evidence of decades of travel around the world, with dents, scratches, worn bits, and patches of rust.

The photography and video in this project foreground these markings and their physical history as a catalyst for sonic and visual experimentation using a range of digital tools. In imagining how a physical object becomes an audiovisual world, the overall goal is to transform ordinary experience into an extraordinary one. We begin by amplifying human presence via an emphasis on breath and breathing (sound and rhythm), then deploy a range of sonic and moving image technologies to reimagine the history of a specific instrument and the culturally received memories and expectations of that instrument. The focus is on bending perception; reaching (forward and back) into our individual consciousnesses to elicit the idiosyncratic and experimental resonances that we all carry with us.

This work is presented at the White Box Projection Lab on Brisbane’s South Bank

Above: This video illustrates some of the development and testing in the White Box Projection Lab.

The work was designed for a space that is 22 meters wide and bisected at right angles by adjacent walls. This treatment conforms with sculptural understandings of space. It requires bodily immersion, motion and actual presence in its physical space, at scale, and in its intended reception site.

This approach uses the phenomenology associated with architectural form, and embodied experience in open air environments. Unlike imagery on small screens and devices that can be ‘looked at’, the work cannot be experienced the same way twice. It can only be understood through its spatial experience in three dimensions at full scale.

Above: The full 10 minute video file created for The International Symposium of Electronic Art for the 2024 exhibition program in the White Box Projection Lab.

Details

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Above: This sample of still images shows the details that are difficult to see in the video when stretched across a small screen. The trombone appears as a vast sculptural object when the imagery is played at scale in the White Box. When viewed frontally, the bell becomes a tunnel-like wormhole penetrating the wall.