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BONNETTA, JOSHUA - Strange Lines and Distances

Format: LP + DVD Label & Cat.Number: Experimedia explp026 Release Year: 2014 Note: inspiring two channel audio visual installation, thematically based on the first transatlantic radio broadcast (1899 by GUGLIELMO MARCONI) => visuals from the transmitting / receiving sites in UK & NL, field recordings, shortwave & longwave radio sounds & archive material shape an impressive audio-visual landscape of forms & waves & sounds... ; beautiful atmospheric work by this Sound Artist and Film-maker from New York; lim. 500, gatefold cover Price (incl. 19% VAT): €27.50 Warning: Currently we do not have this album in stock! More Info "Experimedia Films presents Strange Lines and Distances, an award winning two-channel audio-visual installation by artist Joshua Bonnetta which examines Guglielmo Marconi's first transatlantic radio broadcast. Presented as a special limited edition featuring DVD of the film, 12" Vinyl LP containing an extended score, Printed inner sleeve with Monograph by Jeffrey Sconce, Uncoated Gatefold Sleeve, HD Video & Audio Download Coupons and Optional Blu-Ray Add-on. The work is inspired by Marconi's belief that sound waves never completely disappear, but rather diminish incrementally becoming fainter over time. He believed that with an adequately sensitive receiver, one could amplify the echoes of history. Strange Lines and Distances looks at and listens to the past, revisiting Marconi's original transmission sites in order to explore the hauntological aspects of radio and landscape. The installation invites a consideration of the monumental impact of the first wireless transmission, and explores the medium's potential to conflate and fragment both space and time. Strange Lines and Distances dual channels represent the transmission site in Poldhu Cove, U.K. and the receiving site at Fever Hospital, St. John's, NL. Each historical site is documented using 16mm colour negative film. The sonic composition was created from site-specific field recordings, shortwave and longwave radio recordings and archival material. Mired in static and atmospheric interference, the recordings exist as fragmentary spectres of outport beacons, noise, musical passages and human voice. Visually, each channel contains imagery that resonates and rhymes with the opposing channel in terms of shape, line, color, light and optical geometry. Through a visual examination of the sites' topographical similarities, the work plays with the juxtaposition of landscape, architectural ruins, flora, and geological and meteorological phenomena. The images unfold as a series of long shots, and this play with duration creates a montage that asks the spectator to consider distance and the poetics of form. Joshua Bonnetta is an interdisciplinary artist working with film, video and sound in various modes of theatrical exhibition, performance and installation. His work has shown at The Berlinale, The Toronto International Film Festival, Images Festival, Mutek International Festival of Electronic Music, European Media Arts Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival and others. He is an Assistant Professor in the department of Cinema, Photography and Media Arts at Ithaca College in New York state and has served as a Composer-in-Residence in Electroacoustic Studio ALPHA at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden. Strange Lines and Distances has been featured at Images Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art and was awarded the Deluxe Cinematic Vision Award. Presented by Experimedia Films in association with Images Festival, Umor Rex Records and Evil Llama. Graphic design by Daniel Castrejon. Audio mastered for vinyl by James Plotkin. Video authoring and encoding by Evil Llama." [label info] www.experimedia.net "A film version of Strange Lines And Distances has made the rounds at some of the established film festivals around the globe for the past few years; and now Experimedia offers the video documentation of the piece along with an edit of the soundtrack specifically rendered for vinyl. Bonnetta's work is conceptually driven (and is exceptionally well executed), based upon the first wireless transmission that Marconi broadcast from one side of the English Channel to the other. Out of this single transmission, we not only have a lineage that begets radio then television then cellphones then iPhones then 'the cloud' and onto whatever the next means of immediate communication may be on the horizon; but we also have all of the miscommunications, hidden messages, lost transmissions, EVPs, numbers stations, alien voices, and any other tech-gnostic renderings of the machine as a telepathic device communing with the divine. Bonnetta's piece is a suitably eerie score of shortwave radio drones and oceanic field recordings, compositionally reflecting Marconi's notion that the radio transmission does not actually disappear but just becomes incrementally fainter. As such, Bonnetta's audio sensibilities owes a considerable amount to the long-shot works of Alan Lamb, Jim Haynes, Thomas Koner, and BJ Nilsen. The video work operates on a simple, yet effective conceit with two channels of video representing both sides of the Channel. The video was all shot on 16mm film and maintains a muted color palette of wintery grays and cold blues as Bonnetta tracks through both landscapes which hold numerous environmental similarities, tied through Marconi's idea that his first wireless transmission is still bouncing back and forth between these two sites albeit infinitesimally faint. It's a really beautiful piece of work; and not surprisingly won a handful of awards. The lp contains extended compositions of the soundtrack, a very lengthy piece of critical analysis of the work, a dvd with the film itself, and digital downloads of both the video and the audio. Whew!" [Aquarius Records]