SITE EFFECTS: CHEMNITZ
3 Sound channels, loudspeakers + subwoofer, video projection: 12 mins loop, cables and old factory oven, viewing platform.
During a residency in Chemnitz I installed a site specific installation in the basement of the abandoned Braustolz brewery in Saxony with support from the Begehungen team as part of the Rausch Festival.The installation contained an experimental animated audiovisual film projected into the space combining photography, sounds and video documented from the factory, then manipulated with added music and sound design and layered with other generative elements. Fragments of sounds recorded on site featured in use in the sequences by way of granular synthesis and sampling. This included recordings of impacts made by swinging a caged light into a large empty tank.
The title "Site Effects" suggests a play on words for the drug related term: "Side effects", "a secondary, typically undesirable effect" and the industrial site in which the installation was featured. An old factory oven was installed as the vessel from which the film was projected as if spitting out old machine language and memories.
As a former brewery, unwelcome side effects were a typical part of the final product on the production line and the film was an audiovisual exploration of those themes. Fittingly, the site has itself given way to urban redevlopment as a contemporary side effect. The terminology of "Site Effects" also refers to seismic activity and earth tremors, meanings playfully co-existing in references to disturbances internally and externally, psychologically and structurally. Fragments of machinery providing memories of their previous operations and functions. Distant sounds and repeating lights, patterns and imagery suggesting echoes of both happiness and play or disorder and chaos.
Musical interludes and audio reactive animations punctuated the sequence which was recorded from several small performances in the space. The visual interplay between the audio and visual material created the illusion of bringing the machines back to life again. Some of the footage captured included documenting machinery such as the bottle top machine amongst other unknown factory objects and using some stop frame animation techniques the machines span up again one last time before being consigned to history, on this site at least.
The work is a continuation of an exploratory workflow combining media with algorithms in audiovisual artist documentary film-making.
It was a great opportunity to explore and photograph an abandoned site and install a film, no analogue film cameras were used this time, but it would have been particularly interesting to shoot on film.
Special thanks to the Begehungen team for extensive help and support throughout the festival. I will expand upon and take the Site Effects process to other sites and spaces in the future. Because the film was made specifically for the wall and space and there was not a budget for video documentation it isn't possible to show the video online and so it currently remains as one time only immersive installation.
Please scroll down to view more images, directly below there is a small edited audio extract from the ambient music of the installation. Extended and additional music from the source material will be released as an album, please sign up for notification.
