Reviews

BOX #29 - 26 October 2003 - Luke Jaaniste - Archimedia - Clocked Out Duo

Review by Jamie Hume

"Television is the retina of the mind's eye", 'Videodrome', David Cronenberg, 1982.

On this night the performances were split between the IMA foyer and the screening room.

First of all we were all directed to the screening room for the first part of Luke Jaaniste's sound installation. The piece being presented that night was an extension of what he did at the "Not Grey Walls" back in March in the Judith Wright shopfront.

Everyone was ushered into an unlighted room which was bare except for three televisions with a video camera pointed at each of them. For twenty minutes we sat there in the dark while the machines were left to their devices. A low-level drone which swooped and glided through various frequencies was created while shapeless images remained static on the screens. Very nice indeed. Humans, who needs them?

Then we were sent back out to the foyer for the performance of the Auatralian-American two-piece Clocked Out Duo who two releases and sows at various avant- fests on their CV. Like UK artists Richard Youngs & Simon-Wickham Smith, The Shadow Ring and Ashtray Navigations they create improv based around the use of non-amplified instruments.

The array of instruments used on that evening was quite phenomenal. Squeeze organ, balloon, whistles, metal suspended in water, the list goes on and on. The sounds they created went from the frantic to the subdued. One could not help to watch what they were doing as they went from one sound device to another. A folk traditionalist would have fainted in horror. Clocked Out Duo demonstrated the validity of creating new sounds from traditional instrumentation.

Now it was time to go back to the second half of Luke's sound installation. Again we were all seated in the dark. This time we saw a more active interaction between Luke and the machinery. Playing about with the video cameras the sounds Luke created were more discordant with the images being more than reminiscent of the swirling patterns of sixties "Doctor Who" title sequences which were created via the means of a camera-monitor feedback loop. It should be interesting to see what Luke does next.

We all trumped back out to the foyer for the final act of the evening Archimedia who engage in culture jamming (a term coined by Negativland) using appropriated samples and footage in a symbiotic sound/visual landscape to critique aspects of Western society.

The work they presented was called "Lost Cities Redux: Homage To Baghdad" which interrogated the West and it's invasion of Iraq which in my opinion seems to be turning into America's new Vietnam.

Overall it was a barrage. Using cut up patriotic marches and stock market reports among other things combined with various pulses and hums generated by laptops in conjunction with a multiplicity of images like a drowned metropolis and fighter craft targeting footage Archimedia presented a thought provoking soundfest which engaged all of the senses.

Then it was over. All in all a nice little prelude to "Make It Now: Mini Festival Of Australian Improvised Music" this month. Now that should be interesting.

"They're making the last film/They say it's the best/And we all helped make it/ It's called The Death Of The West".
- 'The Death Of The West", Death In June, 1983.