Diaspora - Let's Hear It For The Vague Blur
DVDR + CDR from Half/theory (HALF05)
Archived item from secret killer of names
Disc 1 - DVD (PAL all regions)
40 minute film - soundtrack in stereo and surround 5.1
Plus 4 short films by Half/theory artists
Disc 2 - CD audio
1. Primate eyes downcast as the world consumes itself
2. The diamond mirage
3. Requiem for monsters
4. Juggling plates of cloud
5. A parliament of rooks
6. Furnace
Diaspora is Lloyd Barrett and Joe Musgrove.
The film "Let's Hear It For The Vague Blur" is a 40 minute slow motion freefall down a kaleidoscopic rabbit's hole of almost graspable abstraction. LHIFTVB has been described, much to the creators' delight, as "moving at the speed of carpet". Colours shift, converge, form shapes. These shapes emerge and dissolve into and out of each other gracefully, inevitably. Constant and contrary movement, although slow, has a dizzying effect but simultaneously a sense of stillness pervades. Faces, landscapes, galaxies, exotic silks, angels, microscopic bacteria are all amongst the images audiences have reported witnessing during showings of this film. All of these images exist only in the minds of the viewers - in this case the mind plays tricks on itself because it has no choice. LHIFTVB is an exercise in gleeful, contemplative confusion. Once the viewer accepts that there is no 'correct' image to see, they open themselves to a flood of imagery and imaginings beyond the artist's ability or desire to control. The viewer will see whatever their eyes choose to show them - whether they want to or not!
The soundtrack to LHIFTVB sonically investigates a broad palette that blurs the line between improvised and composed sound. This was helped in part by the manipulation of live material performed with Scott Sinclair, David Loose, Tam Patton and Andrew Thomson, utilising everything from metal percussion and piano to real-time digital processing. Conceived and composed in multi-channel surround sound, the audio is the air upon which the video floats. The DVD features both stereo and surround 5.1 soundtracks, and a full-spectrum stereo disc for your CD player is also included.
Additional short films on the DVD:
"The Drift Project" - sound and video by Lloyd Barrett.
"Awash With Even" - sound and video by Hydatid (David Loose).
"ego is ether of cantabrigian the 93537829 in immodest to salubrious" - sound and video by Botborg.
"With Doors Open" - sound by Scott Sinclair, Clinton Green, Joe Musgrove - video by Joe Musgrove.
Reviews
Cyclic Defrost - http://www.cyclicdefrost.com
Audiovisual duo Lloyd Barrett and Joe Musgrove have conspired here together for a dreamy piece of psychedelic wallpaper. Still images almost smudge into each other, into vague almost perceptible blurs of colour that gently fragment and burst into another ill-defined image just before you think you're staring to get a handle on what you're seeing. All the images are still, garnered from the internet then processed and abstracted into the aforementioned blurs. The illusion of movement comes from the camera slowly sweeping in a different direction across each image, the superimposing of one image over another. The semi improvised music begins dreamy and ethereal, offering little more the a spaced out bed for the images, thought things becomes a bit more erratic about fifteen minutes in, moving away the sweeping washes of ambience, which although it works is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. It's when they begin utilising high-pitched drones, heavy reverberant delays, increasingly textural tools and providing plenty of space to the compositions that the relationship between the audio and vision seems to change and become more interrelated. Whether this is intentional or even necessary is another matter, this ever-evolving montage of colour and lethargic movement is impossible not to get caught up in. Thanks God it only goes for 40 mins, otherwise you could lose yourself for days. Though there are 4 other experimental short films from the Brisbane based Half Theory family.
Bob Baker Fish
Foxy Digitalis - http://www.digitalisindustries.com/foxyd
Brisbane-based label Half/theory specialise in material by local artists with intriguing approaches to DVD technology as a medium for avant garde multimedia.
Diaspora consist of Lloyd Barrett and Joe Musgrove. The title of this disc is a rather offhand yet appropriate description of the visuals, which consist of fields of random, diaphanous colour patterns drifting over one another. It's very suggestive, and the viewer is likely to perceive faces, human figures, landscapes and so on, swimming into view, only to dissolve back into randomness. It's carefully edited to a soundtrack of equally vague, blurred, processed improv, based mostly around drones and electronics. Though I was unable to utilise the surround sound option, it's evident that this would be especially appropriate for this work.The music stands up to listening without the images and is also included as a bonus CD.
It's like an advanced version of gazing into the embers a fire to an extent. But it's not just an updated lava lamp, chill-out experience. Though the random images are often beautiful, they can quickly turn disturbing, resembling visions from fever dreams.These changes of mood are enhanced by the music - for example, the appearance of guttural growling and cut-up, whispering voices. This, like everything about the work, is very subjective and open to interpretation, and successive viewings tend to leave differing impressions, but a recurring sensation I experienced was of moving through dense fogs of alien weather systems towards an obscured landscape that always dissolves before it can be reached.
It's a very psychedelic and engrossing work, with plenty of repeat viewing value. It's considerably more subtle and welcoming that Botborg's eyeball-melting strobefest for the same label, but equally vigourous and inventive.
Paul Condon