HEAT

Heat is made visible and audible – or the other way around – the pulse and harmony of particular instruments is translated into thermal images: the synesthetic profit of the transformation fuels ever new image/sound discoveries.

Florian Kindlinger and Peter Kutin brilliantly adopt this approach in their imagistic musical suite HEAT. Four stringed instruments (an upright bass, two cellos and a hurdy-gurdy) combine with diverse percussion instruments to constitute an ensemble generating a finely structured composition propelled both visually and acoustically by extraordinary moments of synergy. At the beginning, majestically ascending vibrations sounded by three upright basses are seen as glistening white vibrating beams of light. A brief intermezzo pervaded by white noise and wind sounds lead out to the edge of a forest translated into thermal images showing a snowy landscape. Returning from idealized nature, the steel strings of a piano spark flashing chords, the musical instrument generating heat that gives sublime vent to radially emanating spasms of light.

Glockenspiel-like sounds transition to the intertwining of cello parts according to concisely placed rhythmical beats – a first highpoint in the wake of glowing white light beams underline a slowly emerging, subtly nuanced melodiousness. In turn, the percussive instrument finds no rest, instead burning yellow-red beats of color, yes, virtually scorching the entirely now blackened screen. And finally, the concluding tableau: the strings of a hurdy-gurdy and diverse sound tracks droningly intertwine before everything gradually begins to dissolve in an increasingly bright image of entropy.

Kindlinger/Kutin have found an apt visual vocabulary for the words Lou Reed once sang in the Velvet's famous, "White Light, White Heat": "Aww white heat, it tickle me down to my toes"! (Christian Höller)

Translation by Eve Heller