December 14, 2006
"Instrumental" and "House"– two films by Gabriel Shalom (USA) and "Bassline Baseline" by Nate Harrison (USA)
Music & Film Screening
Gabriel Shalom - HOUSE
USA 2004
19:33 minutes
House is a whimsical video-music documentary about the different styles of house music. DJ Scott Hardkiss describes the various musical styles while an anonymous actor provides musical illustrations in a house. All the music in the video comes directly from the sounds of the actor moving about in the house.
Film: https://vimeo.com/1459613
Nate Harrison - Bassline Baseline
USA 2005
single channel DVD with sound
dimensions variable
21:00 minutes
Bassline Baseline is a video essay that investigates the invention, failure and subsequent resurrection of the mythic Roland TB-303 Bass Line music machine in the last two decades of the 20th century. The narrative seeks to invite thoughts on technological mediation within product innovation and creative expression. The dead-panned 'documentary' video attempts to explore how and why creative tools fail and how increasingly more options, parameters or intermediaries devised during a tool's research and development phase don't necessarily lead to increased expressivity or virtuosity during the tool's lifetime of actual use, unless the super-structure of its
cultural context is dramtically reconsidered.
Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jbZTN6WUy4
Gabriel Shalom - INSTRUMENTAL
USA 2005
65:00 minutes
Bradford Reed, Thomas Truax, Bart Hopkin, and Art Harrison are four musicians who make their own special electro-acoustic instruments. INSTRUMENTAL is a poetic meditation on the lives of these instrument builders and the musical worlds they inhabit.
Through interviews and performances, the instrument-builders are presented in the context of their homes and workshops, as well as in the surrounding urban, suburban, and rural environments.
Bradford Reed is the creator of the Pencilina. The pencilina is an electric ten stringed collision of the hammer dulcimer, slide guitar, koto and fretless bass with six pickups of varied types. It is struck with sticks, plucked and bowed, giving Reed an incredibly wide sonic palette. When he plays he sounds like a whole rock band.
Thomas Truax performs accompanied by his "drummer" Sister Spinster, a variable speed automated percussion device made from a prepared bicycle wheel, and sings through his Hornicator, a modified and amplified gramophone horn channeled through a foot-controlled looping device.
Bart Hopkin is an ethnomusicologist and instrument enthusiast. He published a journal for fifteen years called Experimental Musical Instruments which remains to be the most centralized organ of the instrument-building community in America. He edited books dedicated to unique instruments, the most well known being 'Gravikords Whirlies & Pyrophones'
Arthur Harrison is by far the most obscure of the four interview subjects. He is a committed theremin enthusiast. He has built and performed his own theremins for years and sells his original theremin designs worldwide.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/3310013
The screening is curated by Cornelia and Holger Lund. It has been published by Raum für Projektion on dvd. Please click here.