(2008-2009) video and live electronics
“Il transito ostile della luna” [5’ 17”]
Premiered at Riva del Garda, May 3rd 2008
Video & live electronics: Roberto Doati
“Potrete incappare in un contrattempo” [5’17”]
Premiered at : Sala Tartini del Conservatorio “Giuseppe Tartini”, Trieste, November 24th 2010
Video & live electronics: Roberto Doati
“Le stelle suggeriscono nuove opportunità” [5’ 18”]
Premiered at : Sala Tartini del Conservatorio “Giuseppe Tartini”, Trieste, November 24th 2010
Video & live electronics: Roberto Doati
“Vivrete una settimana all’insegna della stabilità” [6’]
Premiered at : Sala Tartini del Conservatorio “Giuseppe Tartini”, Trieste, November 24th 2010
Video & live electronics: Roberto Doati
The videomusic series Sindrome scamosciata is inspired by IPCRESS, my very first encounter with electronic music in 1965. It is a film directed by Sidney Furie, based on a spy novel by Len Deighton, starring Michael Caine who works for some secret agency of the government. IPCRESS stands for “Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under strESS”.
Both the visual and sound materials come from a scene where Caine, kidnapped by the Soviet with the help of a British betrayer, is subjected to brainwashing. He is forced to listen to some electronic music and is hurt by a repeated sequence of synthetic images in a sort of guided imagery.
All of my video start with a sequence recalling the IPCRESS one, then becoming a study on image persistence. I realized these images superimposing a holed black cardboard to the screen of my turned-on TV. Shooting in the dark with a very slow shutter and moving quickly the video camera gives rise to luminous traces. An out of context subliminal image appears periodically.
The music is performed and “improvised” on stage within a Csound + Max/MSP environment patch with 21 control parameters to modify the 30 seconds original soundtrack of the brainwashing scene, the base algorithm being a Phase Vocoder analysis-synthesis with 100 oscillators.
In The IPCRESS File book each chapter is headed with a quote from a horoscope, so the title of each piece of my series is extracted from my stars for the day I realize the piece: : “Il transito ostile della luna”, “Potrete incappare in un contrattempo”, “Le stelle suggeriscono nuove opportunità”, “Vivrete una settimana all’insegna della stabilità”.
Thanks to Matteo Ricchetti who was able to transform a remedy to my inexperience with video technology in an improving meaning in Il transito ostile della luna.