Zoetrope
ix 1999
Zoetrope is a dangerous and perverse experiment in alchemy. Machines are pushed until they break, sound is pressurised and overheated until it bubbles over into light. It is an object made from technological detritus - howling feedback, power spikes, white noise and video snow; the blank blue screen, flickering slightly. This raw material was melted and moulded until it at last took on a new sheen of artifice, but its original character keeps on breaking through. It questions the illusions of technology; that there is something beyond the TV screen, or between the loudspeakers; that a succession of still images constitute movement, or that a dead, pre-recorded voice is alive. Sound and image have a complex relationship in the work; not so much mixed as interleaved. They flutter around each other, not quite making contact, but defining one another, by absence as much as presence. They work together to make a meta-texture, highlight aspects of one another, but remain essentially independent. Zoetrope exists on tape, as a performance (suited to a concert environment), and as an installation (suited to a gallery). The performance version may also be played with sound only. Don't watch the light, watch the spaces between.
Joseph Hyde (b. London 1969) uses digital and electronic media to make sonic and multimedia works, installations and performances. Particular areas of exploration in his work are the complex interaction of abstract sound and image, and the integration of interactive technology into live performance.
http://www.dartington.ac.uk/~j.hyde/
http://www.heelstone.com/meridian/hyde.html
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