The Audio-Visual Dance

Experimental Tuesdays at the University of Milwaukee’s Union Theatre just displayed four films and two videos under the program title, “Break in the chain of light.” All of them were interesting in their own way. Each of these separate movies had their visual interact differently with its audio. I always view the audio-visual relationship as a sort of dance between the two sensory modes. Sometimes visual and audio and synced together, for example, when a glass comes into contact with another glass you hear an expected “ting” to ring out in the audio as a reaction to the visual. Other times a soundtrack will be made to interact with the visual track. This method often times ignores the physical actions in the film, and tends to react to the mood of the film. However, the two films that I would like to speak about tonight are Brilliant Noise (2006) and What the Water said.

Brilliant Noise is one of my favorite videos that I have seen. It consists of archival footage of NASA’s, I assume, raw satellite footage of the sun, and the solar flares that reach out to interrupt the black color of space. The beautiful imagery was enough for me, but the sound was also amazingly intriguing. I have earlier talked about how sound is synced up to match the video, and this case is no different. When images move the audio ‘moves’ with it. However, this sound is much more abstract. You do not hear the sounds that the actual sun is making, but you hear artificial sounds. Maybe artificial is not quite the word to use but I would say that these sounds were not created from the source that the camera was capturing at the time.

The astonishing images of the sun would sometimes jump. Maybe it was due to technical difficulties with the satellite being so far away to communicate with, but every time the image jumped this angelical ring would precisely fall into my ear. The edit and the sound both had something in common. The attack, sustain, and decay were expeditious. If the attack, sustain, and decay contained any variable in speed or placement the sound may not have seemed right to me. This sound is repeated throughout the film. The ambience in the film was “directly [translated by] the intensity of the brightness into audio manipulation.” (Experimental Tuesdays pamphlet) The way that I interpret this is the light was what affected the audio’s ambience. Again, to refer to my reference to the audio-visual dance form above the audio was interacting with the video through being ‘synced’. However, from what I got from the quote it leads me to believe the audio was created through some technical malfunction with the intense light reacting with the satellite. If anyone thinks I am wrong please correct, but either way the audio is still there to be one with the film not to contrast it.

The audio in this video had been organically created which brings me to my next film.

The film What the Water Said (2006-07) could technically be said to be created by a crab. The idea of taking film stock and placing it in the water where it is vulnerable to such creatures and elements like “salt water, sand, and rocks; as it was chewed by… crabs, fish, and underwater creatures” (Experimental Tuesdays pamphlet) is completely organic. The ocean created this series of six aquatic films. I am interested in this film because it almost seems like it had been synced up in most parts. When you see a big gash of black on the film emulsion you also hear as if it had been struck with a bludgeon object like a rock. The audio is directly related to the visual, the visual is the audio, or vice versa. Now this sound is not very abstract in the way that it is nothing new, but it is most certainly abstract how the sound was acquired. An image of a crab scratching the top layers of the emulsion off comes to mind when I think of the creation of this piece. The decay of salt water is the ambience. The light pebbles are the middle ground, and the orchestra of crustaceans is the highs and foreground of this piece. The visual is a multitude of the elements I have named above working with the same elements of visual to create audio thus making a complete audio-visual work.