please stand back!
Above and below do not exist at first, and other indications of direction do not work either. The picture itself is an agglomeration of details that are constantly being created and disappearing, becoming and ceasing to exist, assembling and breaking up. Each image in each of its stages appears in a white space and is caught there. We are witnessing a kind of creation, a big bang during which the condensed mass of information is slowly atomized or particularized. Urban scenes gradually take shape, though only in a fragmentized and strangely pulsing form which is constantly on the verge of disintegration or decay. At first however the particles are merely colored fields, small rectangular plates of uniform size gleaming in pale shades of gray. They create a spatial reference only after recondensing, then scatter and abandon all meaning.
This material, once recorded, can never be examined as such, the program resolutely decides what is shown. The picture has been compressed, calculated in particles of the same size, each one of which can move and articulate in a completely autonomous manner.
As the picture appears, the authority of numerical logic manifests itself first. Even the sounds and voices in "please stand back!" are strangely disembodied, the images rarely manage to overcome their temporary nature and vagueness and form a brochure for the city. The city, as a synonym for density and a confusing arrangement, becomes a plaything in a digital esthetic which confidently manipulates its own appearance, suggesting that all entities can now be put into a state of complete instability and changeability. (Marc Ries)
Translation: Steve Wilder
"Architecture forms all sounds we hear. Urban architecture is a sound box, it shapes a space, wherein the range of sounds which surround us is resounded and reflected. Stadtmusik deals with sounds in cities, by analysing sound structures which are triggered by urban buildings and facilities. They focus on the aspect of movement in the city, which reinforces a dynamic experience of the urban soundscape: particular sounds emerge through movement, sound and its timbre evolves from material and space.
(production note)
"Zurueckbleiben bitte!" / « Reculez, sil vous plaît » / texte française
La matière ainsi créée nest jamais perceptible en tant que telle ; le programme détermine à lui seul ce qui est visible ou non. Cest lui qui a comprimé limage, la dissociée en fragments de taille égale, en particules qui peuvent se déplacer et se combiner entre elles de façon parfaitement autonome.
Plus que tout, cest lautorité de la logique numérique qui se manifeste à travers la structure de limage. Dans « Reculez, sil vous plaît », les bruitages et les voix sont eux aussi singulièrement immatériels, les images ne parvenant quà peine à venir à bout de leur caractère transitoire et imprécis pour générer une perspective de la ville. La ville même, en tant que symbole de la concentration et de la confusion, devient ici le jouet dune esthétique numérique qui manipule à loisir son apparence, laissant deviner quaujourdhui, toute création peut être amenée à un état dinstabilité et de précarité absolues. (Marc Ries)
Traduction : Claude Manach
Zurückbleiben bitte!
2007
Austria
7 min 38 sec