Since its nascent days, the audio-visual format has wedded sound to screen. But what happens when visual components leap from their traditional flat-surface homes to extend through the stage, audience, and architectural space?
Whether it’s lasers cutting through the air and generating sound in the process or haunting moments that seem to lift the veil on reality as light and smoke play tricks of the eye, these five upcoming MUTEK performances transcend the screen as sole visual source, inviting audiences into worlds where they move from spectators to living elements of the work itself.
ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS!
ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS! open the door to a kinetic world where worn out appliances get a second chance as playable instruments.
Led by Ei Wada of Open Reel Ensemble, the Japanese art collective fashions everything from standing fans to disused air conditioners into the vessels for their “electromagnetic” punk sound, a danceable blend of traditional folk rhythms and new wave glitches not unreminiscent of bands like LCD Soundsystem and New Order.
Flickering screens acting as drums when tapped, barcode scanners generating buzzing frequencies, and CRT-TVs reincarnated as ukulele-style instruments come together to take viewers on a futuristic journey to the past, full of pulsing live-wire energy and playful twists on conventional views of technology.
Nelly-Eve Rajotte - Trees communicate with each other at 220 hertz
Nelly-Eve Rajotte's full-dome performance of Trees communicate with each other at 220 hertz brings audiences into a Boreal forest landscape with a live tree at its heart.
Connected by electrodes to a modular synthesizer, the tree’s signals generate sound in real-time, simulating the forest's natural textures and rhythms. In parallel, Rajotte crafts an immersive visual atmosphere of moving forest imagery, digitally archiving the forest through a three-dimensional memory that investigates non-human perceptions of the living world.
Driven by the imperceptible frequencies of organic ecosystems, the performance invites viewers into a sensitive space between spectrality and preservation, where they no longer simply contemplate the landscape, but become part of it.
Super Galaxy Meow Meow - Reciprocity
Super Galaxy Meow Meow’s Reciprocity asks a simple yet intriguing question: What sound would a laser make if it could speak?
Reversing the traditional audio-drives-visuals script, the duo generates a real-time feedback conversation between light and sound, with light acting as the catalyst. Geometrical laser patterns projected at the ceiling feed and shape sound, and sound is then processed and transformed, modulating the laser system in return.
As the artists respond and improvise in real-time, the audience is captured in an intense, unrepeatable dialogue where light becomes an instrument for writing sound and meaning emerges through interconnection, impermanence and the beauty of being fully in the present moment.
Sara Persico & Mika Oki - Sphaîra
Sara Persico and Mika Oki’s performance of Sphaira transports viewers inside the ghostly atmosphere of “The Dome,” an experimental concrete theatre located in Tripoli, northern Lebanon.
Field recordings captured during Persico’s trip to the dome recreate its natural “whispering” effect, while Oki’s dense light scenography creates a hazy atmosphere where fractal and abstract imagery form a mesmerizing dance of shape and shadow.
As smoke, sound, and stroboscopic effects flood the room, the audience begins to wonder if what they see is part of the performance or a creation of their own visual processing in their haunting performance that invites profound sensory engagement and a trance-like inward turn.
Violent Magic Orchestra
Self-described as the "world's largest strobe gang," Violent Magic Orchestra have been inciting dancefloor mayhem around the globe with their high-octane fusion of black metal, trance, and gabber.
Armed with smoke machines, amplifiers, and blinding strobes, the Japanese collective unleashes an all-encompassing barrage of sci-fi inspired visuals, gritty powerhouse vocals, and blistering blast beats at almost mind-numbing force.
The group’s members, donning corpse-like makeup, are known to dive head first into the “death rave” themselves, ready to guide moshpit diehards to collective noise-driven release and occasional moments of ethereal beauty to cut through the chaos.
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