Landscape Video Score
Video-partytura krajobrazowa

The landscape video scores were recorded in the vicinity of Ålvik in Norway, near Egilsstaðir in Iceland, and in the English landscape park Kinský Garden in Prague, Czech Republic. Each video score consists of two juxtaposed static shots presented in a wide frame and placed in the upper half of the compositional field. In these shots, moving figures place markers in the natural landscape. These points take the form of small white markers scattered throughout the natural space and left in place for most of the duration of each recording. The placement of the markers in the frame is not only a visual intervention in the environment, but rather a deliberate act of recording a notation that encodes information about the pitch of the sound for each point. The static form of the captured footage allows the vertical axis of the frame to function as a conventional scalar system. These compositions were realised by me using digital synthesizers designed specifically for this purpose in the Max compositional environment, and screen recordings of the instruments performing the video score are located at the bottom of the frame, showing the components of the instruments.

The sound character of the composition refers to the minimalist aesthetics of drone music, focusing on the timbre and resonance of long, sustained tones and clusters of tones. In the central part of the frame, there are two horizontal graphic notations corresponding to two filmed scenes, marking the performance parts of individual instruments. By specifying the starting point of each tone, its pitch position on a conventional scale and its duration, these notations also serve as visual performance cues. The notation elements are additionally equipped with a vertical time marker that runs from left to right, indicating the exact moment of sound at a given moment. The combination of the two staves constitutes a graphic score of the performed piece, which directly refers to the concept of graphic notation (used by composers such as G. Ligeti, K. Penderecki and J. Cage), while drawing on the formal procedures used in graphic music (including works by E. Brown, S. Busotti and B. Schaeffer).

The video score is not only inscribed in the landscape, but also performed by digital instruments in the form of a loop, with no beginning and no end. The author’s action, captured in a natural setting, can be perceived as the technical basis of the film’s operating mechanics, in which the performed action remains subordinate to the transmission, which ultimately manifests itself as sound, while the elements of the landscape determine the final form of the composition. In their gestures and methods of placing markers, the character appearing in the film does not struggle with the landscape they encounter, but rather surrenders to its possibilities, gently attempting to mark specific points that translate into a polyphonic resonance of tones in the resulting composition. The static framing adopted when documenting outdoor activities results from the established mechanics and modular structure of the intermedia project.

The elements of the natural landscape encountered in the locations of the action were not adapted, prepared or additionally illuminated by me in any way, and the shots of selected locations reflect their actual topography. The film recordings are complemented by subtle sound environments that I captured while placing points in the landscape. The field recordings of the acoustic environment, recorded in these locations during the performance, also served as source material for the development of the soundtrack emitted by the last element of my intermedia project – a sound installation entitled Largo for Three Points, which conveys the recorded sound characteristics of all the landscapes presented in the video scores, while performing the score according to the assigned pattern using built-in mechanical instruments. The construction of the installation is based on an electroacoustic method of stereophony using two sound emission channels, thanks to which it is possible (to a certain extent) to evoke the impression of the spatial dimensionality of sound sources. On two steel structures placed in the exhibition space, I installed rigid elements specially adapted to these structures, which also serve as sources of acoustic emission thanks to the installation of exciters – devices that enable the excitation of vibrations in any surface. The uniform murmurs of field recordings of the natural environment are rhythmically disrupted by electromagnets performing one of the video scores in real time, at their own pace.