The History of Photography in Sound - Michael Finnissy
October 2001Flanders Festival Concert Review
Photographer Ken Scott and video artist Anouk de Clercq teamed up with pianist Ian Pace for the second complete performance of Michael Finnissy's monumental History of Photography in Sound
at Transit, part of the Flanders Festival, in Leuven, Belgium in October 2001.
Visual Variations
This performance in Flanders followed on from the innovative audio-visual approach used at the world premiere of Finnissy's Etched bright with sunlight...
- the use of background images choreographed to the live music. Etched bright...
forms the eleventh and final chapter in The History...
, a marathon, 5½ hour cycle of pieces for solo piano.
Ken Scott's stills topped and tailed the work, ranging from the fleeting and subliminally-changing ideas of chapter 1 Le demon d'analogie
to the almost frenetic flow of colour in Etched bright...
that brought the performance to a sudden and tantalising end.
Interspersed were Anouk de Clercq's evocative and often haunting archive-edits in grainy-monochrome that brought great atmosphere to chapters 4, 7 and 10, ;My Parents' Generation Thought War Meant Something
, Eadweard Muybridge - Edvard Munch
and Unsere Afrikareise
. Spaced throughout the performance yet commencing with subtlety and an occasional element of surprise, the visuals brought respite, a chance to shift the gaze from the spotlit piano but never to divert attention from richness and beauty of the score nor the masterful playing of Ian Pace.
New Audio Visual Challenges - more by Ken Scott
Running a/v to recorded music has, I have discovered through this venture, severe limitations: a tape player does not make an interesting resting place for the eye, so images have to be ever-present.
But live music brings an opportunity to work with much more subtlety, making use of long pauses and dark spaces, dissolving images subliminally so that changes from darkness to colour almost evade perception. Hints of images, third-images not fully-formed, fades away to black. Suggestions and hints, not even ideas, lead the viewer to make connections with the music, and give time for reflection and reforming.
The auditorium plays a critical role in the success of the venture. In Leuven our room gave a wall projection of some 6m2. Ian at the piano was situated close to the audience one-third of the way from the 'screen' to the rear with a single spotlight. There was a feeling of viewing the spectacle through a tunnel, with space unexplored and dark behind the music, which came to life sometimes suddenly yet often delicately, providing glimpses of something that lay beyond.
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