ONOMATOPOEIC ALPHABET
AURA SATZ
Aura Satz, Film still, Onomatopoeic Alphabet, 2010
Onomatopoeic Alphabet is a short film centred around a Chladni plate, A Scientific instrument invented by Ernst Chladni, the 'Father of Acoustics', to visualise sound vibrations. The film explores nodal figures, sound patterns and symmetry, and uses a sine wave generator as a musical instrument. Each sound effectively produces a moving image and inspires the viewer to read the abstract imagery as not only a sound wave, notation or graphic score but as a true representation of what is being heard. Much like an unknown hieroglyphic code, graphic shorthand or Rorschach inkblots, the images provoke unexpected associations concerning the shape of sound and the graphic systems of language and communication. The film looks like a musical score of sorts, as well as a bizarre ever-changing alphabet that morphs like an organic living being in response to the changing audio-visuals. The film engages in a reflexive and reversible relationship between image and sound, cause and effect, the indexical trace and the symbolic code. The graphic sequences evoke utopian ideas around the possibility of a universal language, a system of signs that is decipherable by all.
Aura Satz, AEIOU Sketch, 2010
Alongside the film Aura presents AEIOU, a small multi-channel sound sculpture using hearing trumpets, and featuring voice artist Mikhail Karikis.
Inspired by research indicating that each vowel corresponds to an intrinsic pitch,
each trumpet emits a different vowel sound, creating unusual overtones and beats.
Onomatopoeic Alphabet and AEIOU are commissioned by VIVID and are showing as Part of the exhibition Language
Installation of 'AEIOU' and 'Onomatopoeic Alphabet' at VIVID, photo Oona Lurås Wiggan
LANGUAGE
VIVID
2- 18 DEC 2010
Thu, 12-6pm and Fri-Sat, 12-5pm
VIVID presents LANGUAGE, an exhibition and events programme which explores the constructs of language and meaning from far reaching cultural perspectives. Artists include John Adams, Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, Barbad Golshiri, Gary Hill, Aura Satz, Guy Sherwin, Margaret Tait, and Olivier Zabat.
As part of the events programme Aura Satz will be performing on the 16th of Dec at 7.15PM
Using a Chladni plate, some tuning forks, and other such contraptions, Satz performs an annotated, illustrated, fragmented talk on sound,
its visualisation, and the utopian belief in a universal alphabet.
Aura Satz VIVID performance, photo Oona Lurås Wiggan
The performance is preceded by a screenings of Samuel Becket's ' Not I' , from BBC 2, The Lively Arts: Shades, Three Plays by Samuel Beckett (courtesy BFI)
A rare screening of BBC 2 footage documenting Billie Whitelaw's 1975 performance of Samuel Beckett's 20-minute dramatic monologue Not I. The film sees a single spotlight fixated on a logorrhoea of fragmented and jumbled sentences uttered by ‘Mouth' and which obliquely tells the story of a woman who having been abandoned by her parents has lived a loveless, mechanical existence.
from 6.30PM | admission £2
LANGUAGE is presented as the closing season for VIVID's 2008-10 PIONEERS programme, which juxtaposes contemporary practice with key historical works informed by the moving image. LANGUAGE is supported by National Lottery through Arts Council England, Birmingham Cultural Partnership.
VIVID
140 Heath Mill Lane
Birmingham B9 4AR
Tel: +44 (0) 121 766 7876
Fax: +44 (0) 871 251 0747
Email: info@vivid.org.uk
'Onomatopoeic Alphabet' was written, directed, filmed, recorded and edited by Aura Satz
Sine wave music and voiceover by Aura Satz
Featuring voice artist Mikhail Karikis
Dubbing mix by Gernot Fuhrmann
Aura Satz would like to thanks MIkhail Karikis, Danielle Chin, Prokit, Chris Pierce, and Raf Gasak.
AEIOU is included in the group exhibition
IN SEARCH OF ALCHEMIC TIMES
5 August – 3 September 2011
Artists: Aura Satz, Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann, Jennifer Walshe, Liliane Lijn, Nathan Witt, Peter Lewis and Makiko Nagaya, Rowena Harris, Steven Ounanian, Tom Badley, Unrealised Projects.
Curated by Cecilia Wee.
Thursday – Saturday 12-6pm
Wednesdays by appointment
235 Brompton Road
London SW3 2EP
email: cecilia@ceciliawee.com
email: info@insearchofalchemictimes.com
tel: 07527 640 419
http://insearchofalchemictimes.com/
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