This Sunday, John Cage and Semiconductor in De Duif

As part of our ongoing collaboration with the renowned Ives Ensemble, we are co-hosting a concert and film screening at church De Duif, Prinsengracht 754 in Amsterdam, on Sunday 26 February from 4 till 6 PM. Tickets are 5 Euro at the door, which opens at 3:30 PM.

The ensemble will perform two works by John Cage: Music for five (1984) and Atlas Eclipticalis (1961/1962), which is based on an atlas of the stars published in 1958 by Czech astronomer Antonín Becvár. From the collection of the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) we are showing two works by Semiconductor, the British artist duo that consists of Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt: Black Rain (2009) and Brilliant Noise (2006).

Both films use raw footage that was collected by NASA-satellites while observing the solar system. Solar wind, passing planets and comets orbiting the sun can be seen as background stars and the milky way pass by, providing the visual equivalent of Cage’s astrological sounds.

In addition to the programme their will be a short introduction, drinks and nice people. So please join us this Sunday, also to celebrate the fact that John Cage would have turned 100 in 2012. For more info (in Dutch) click here. For De Duif in Google Maps click here.

You can listen to John Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis on Spotify by clicking here.

Brilliant Noise by Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt

…this version suffers a bit from the internet compression. The original version is much better.

Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun’s finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences. The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies.

Lots more info here:

http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/Brilliant_Noise/BNoise.htm