Aura Satz: iN AND OUT OF SYNCH

IN AND OUT OF SYNCH

A 16mm film and performance by Aura Satz

Aura Satz, In and Out of Synch

In and Out of Synch is a filmic performance which centres around the optical printing of soundtracks, committing to 16mm film a technology on the verge of extinction, entombing and encrypting its own language onto itself. Shot at the post-production facilities of Pinewood studios, London, the close-up sequences feature abstract patterns of sound encoded as light, printed onto the soundtrack area of the filmstrip. The film features the quivering light of a 16mm mono and a 35mm stereo optical sound camera, providing a seismic glimpse at a sound-wave in formation, on occasions flashing like a stroboscopic Rorschach inkblot.

Both mesmerizing and assaulting the senses, the visually hypnotic patterns are disrupted by the voiceover, scripted in dialogue with the artist and filmmaker Lis Rhodes, whose expanded cinema installation using optical sound is on display in The Tanks. The two voices alternate and coincide, interrogating the sound-image synchronicity and correlation with poetic expressions. The film is accompanied by a live musical performance which animates a Ruben’s tube, a device which similarly modulates light in response to sound, creating spectacular waves of flames. In parallel to the film’s exploration of sound encoded as light, the event features sound encoded as fire; a more primal, dramatic, and almost pre-cinematic counterpart of the same principle of sound as light.

For the inaugural version at the Tanks, the live performance features the vocals of interdisciplinary artist Mikhail Karikis and Anton Lukoszevieze on cello. This performance is linked to the symposium Playing in the Shadows, exploring the subterranean darkness of The Tanks and radical experiments in projection and performance.

'In and Out of Synch' performed at The Tanks, Tate Modern. Photo: Gabrielle Fonseca Johnson/Tate Photography, 2012, copyright Tate Photography

Filmed, directed and edited by Aura Satz

Scripted in dialogue with Lis Rhodes

Voiceover Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz

DP Bevis Bowden

Dubbing mixer Gernot Fuhrmann

Funded by Arts Council England, Tate Modern, Arnolfini and private donations

Support in kind from Pinewood Studios

Special thanks to Martin Sawyer, Jason Stevens, Simon Hill at Pinewood; Len Thornton and Tim Sidell, and Jackie and Peter Stewart.

Performances and Screenings:

27 October 2012
Premiere at Tate OIL TANKS, as part of ‘Playing in the Shadows: Film Action’

with live music by Anton Lukoszevieze and Mikhail Karikis

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern-tanks-tate-modern/film-music-and-live-performance/aura-satz-and-out-synch

1 November 2012
Arnolfini, Bristol

with live music by Anton Lukoszevieze

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/kode9-mfo-ms-haptic-aura-satz-ben-russell

This evening features the UK premier of Kode9, MFO & Ms. Haptic's Her Ghost - a powerful and provocative live performance, reworking the late Chris Marker's La Jetee from the female character's perspective, redressing its historical gender imbalance as they draw new narratives, a mounumental sound composition from Kode9, and MFO's carefully reconfigured images, out of Marker's originals. Also on the evening, a new filmic performance by Aura Satz encodes sound as light via synaesthetic experiments with the image and optical tracks of 16mm film, with live music and a voice over scripted in collaboration with Lis Rhodes, whose iconic work of expanded cinema, Light Music, was a response to the under-representation of women in the musical avant-garde. Ben Russell's Trypps film series is an ongoing study in trance, travel and psychedelic ethnographies.

Aura Satz was interviewed by Alastair Cameron on the occasion of her performance of 'In and Out of Synch' at the four-day event Visionary Kingdom at Arnolfini, November 2012.

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/blog/in-and-out-of-synch-aura-satz-in-dialogue

8 June 2013
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway
Machine Dreams, nyMusikk's annual festival of adventurous music

with live music by Anton Lukoszevieze and Maja Ratkje

Smooth Automators
STEFAN GOLDMANN + PINQUINS
AURA SATZ + MAJA S.K. RATKJE
+ ANTON LUKOSZEVIEZE
PEOPLE LIKE US

Machine Dreams is a festival exploring the machine in all its glory. Not only as a paean to obsolete mechanisms and the soundscape that disappears with them, but as a celebration of the machine as a model for thinking. Only Connect brings you celebrations of the vanishing white noise between FM stations where voices are heard fading in and out of range; an examination of the vocoder, a human-voice scrambling machine born within the US military which went on to define the sound of electro; explorations of time machines; mechanical pianos; machines transforming images into sound and vice versa; customised sonic tools as well as obsolete technology which seemed to offer the possibility of communication with another world altogether. The 'progress' which machines are said to bring has always had its supporters and its critics. Through our diverse programme, we hope to examine the machine through multiple perspectives: both as a utopian construction built to improve lives, and as a dehumanizing force undermining something essential about society. Plus, we will look at ways in which people and machines are learning to live together, creatively and inventively. And at Only Connect, all of this, of course, is approached via the medium of music and sound, which, perhaps more than any other art form, has been profoundly affected by the enormous transformations of the machine age.

http://www.onlyconnect.no/
http://nymusikk.no/en/hva-skjer/only-connect-2013-machine-dreams

22 September 2014
Screened as part of ‘Transform: Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz’, Screenings and conversation at Tate Britain, London

Transform launches with an intimate dialogue between two innovative artists. Through existing films and never-before-seen works in progress, Aura Satz and Lis Rhodes will discuss how their respective practices explore the materiality of film alongside themes of notation, experimentation and agency. Curated by Zoe Whitley.

Download the 'Transform: Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz' programme notes here http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/film/transform-lis-rhodes-and-aura-satz

Tate Britain
Millbank
London SW1P 4RG
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/film/transform-lis-rhodes-and-aura-satz

3-7 October 2013
Screened at the 51st New York Film Festival, 'Views from the Avant-garde', curated by Mark McElhatten

Our popular yearly touchstone for experimental film returns with 45 programs in glorious Super-8, 16mm and 35mm film and HD formats. Many familiar faces have returned and this year's slate feature 45 new artists as well as several mini-retrospectives of artists including, Aura Satz, Lois Patino, Sandro Aguilar, and Jean-Paul Kelly. Views will also offer special tributes to the late Stom Sogo and Anne Robertson, whose work is a testimony to the power of a cinema that is fearless, confidential and inextinguishable. Curated by Mark McElhatten.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center
70 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023-6595
http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/program-i-aura-satz
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2013
http://www.filmlinc.com/press/entry/fslc-announces-complete-lineup-for-the-17th-edition-of-views-from-the-avant

13 May 2015
'Soundfigures: Films by Aura Satz'
A selection of films by Aura Satz, programmed by Michele Smith, DIM Cinema, Vancouver Cinametheque

(Near) extinct technologies make sound visible in this program of shorts by London-based artist Aura Satz that delve into ideas of knowledge, memory, and communication. On a Chladni Plate, a device that marked the birth of acoustics, grains of sand, moving like Busby Berkeley dancers, form intricate patterns in response to changing sound frequencies, their shapes recalling the utopian quest for a 'pure,' onomatopoeic alphabet. Wax cylinder recordings combine with modern scientific instruments to animate a text by Rainer Maria Rilke on the possibility of hearing the dead by playing their skulls with a gramophone needle. A Ruben's Tube translates a histrionic voice-over into a standing wave of small flames, provoking unexpected associations, from the biblical burning bush to various acts of ventriloquism in pop culture. Breaking its long silence, the Oramics Machine plays hand-drawn compositions by its inventor, electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram. Kaleidoscopic effects in the lamphouse of a 35mm film printer honour Natalie Kalmus, colour consultant on masterpieces of the Technicolor era. Chromatic distortions in early colour-film tests are revealed through the eyes of the George Eastman family and old Hollywood stars. In a dramatic finale, Satz and experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes encode their voices as abstract light patterns on 16mm mono and 35mm stereo filmstrips in a collaborative exploration of sound-image synchronicity.

DIM Cinema
The Cinematheque
1131 Howe St.
Vancouver BC
Canada
http://www.dimcinema.ca/soundfigures-films-aura-satz

18 Feb 2016
'Between the Bullet and the Hole' (Plus Other Shorts) + Q&A at Whitechapel Gallery, London

Aura Satz presents the UK premiere of 'Between the Bullet and the Hole', her latest short film which examines the role of women in ballistic research, early computing and pattern perception in warfare. Presented alongside her works focusing on memory, notation, encryption and gender, the event also features an in conversation with special guests Morgan Quaintance and David Alan Grier.

Whitechapel Gallery
77-82 Whitechapel High St
London E1 7QX
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/aura-satz-bullet-hole/

24 March 2016
'In and Out of Synch', an evening of films and sound with Aura Satz, presented by Liquid Architecture and Gertrude Contemporary

Satz presents works that explore the relationship between esoteric technologies (Chladni plate, Rubens' tube, theremin, mechanical music machines, phonographs, dial tones, drawn/optical sound) and the human body (heightened perception, sensory disorientation, psychoacoustics) and how these are mediated by notation systems, languages and codes. Followed by Q&A with Joel Stern.

Gertrude Contemporary
200 Gertrude St, Fitzroy
Melbourne VIC 3065
Australia
https://liquidarchitecture.org.au/events/aura-satz-in-and-out-of-synch
https://liquidarchitecture.org.au/events/aura-satz-talk
http://www.gertrude.org.au/

3 October 2016
Screening as part of Flaherty NYC, curated by Genevieve Yue and Chris Stults, Anthology Film Archives, New York

FLAHERTY NYC: WILD SOUNDS, PROGRAM 1: VOICES FROM BEYOND (Carolyn Lazard, Sara Magenheimer, Courtney Stephens, and Aura Satz in person).
Technology often 'speaks' in the voices of women, from virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa to the affectless tones of automated phone services. The various technological devices in this program, in turn, reshape what a woman's voice sounds like, from the Ruben's tube that visualizes sound in Aura Satz's IN AND OUT OF SYNCH, to the hypnotically looped 16mm optical track in Gunvor Nelson's MY NAME IS OONA, and the text-to-speech computer applications in Sara Magenheimer's SEVEN SIGNS THAT MEAN SILENCE. In Martine Syms's A PILOT FOR A SHOW ABOUT NOWHERE, Courtney Stephens's IDA WESTERN EXILE, and Carolyn Lazard's GET WELL SOON, the voices of technology and mass media alternately torment, inspire, and indelibly shape the lives of the filmmakers.

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=10&year=2016#showing-46368 http://flahertyseminar.org/flaherty-nyc/flaherty-fall-2016/

7th March 2017
'Between the Bullet and the Hole' (Plus Other Shorts) at HOME Manchester

Followed by Q&A with Chris Paul Daniels

HOME Manchester
2 Tony Wilson Place
Manchester M15 4FN
https://homemcr.org/event/between-the-bullet-and-the-hole-plus-other-shorts-qa/
Part of: Artist Talks https://homemcr.org/event/artist-talks/

Exhibitions:

5 Sep - 20 Oct 2013
'In and Out of Synch' exhibited as a looped 16mm film installation in 'Nicola Ellis & Aura Satz'
Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

2 Hewitt Street
Manchester, M15 4GB
T: 0161 832 8034
info@castlefieldgallery.co.uk
Gallery opening times during exhibitions: Wed-Sun, 1-6pm
http://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/event/nicola-ellis-aura-satz/

AURA SATZ

IN AND OUT OF SYNCH

A 16mm film and performance by Aura Satz

Aura Satz, In and Out of Synch

'In and Out of Synch' performed at The Tanks, Tate Modern. Photo: Gabrielle Fonseca Johnson/Tate Photography, 2012, copyright Tate Photography

Performances and Screenings:

27 October 2012
Premiere at Tate OIL TANKS, as part of ‘Playing in the Shadows: Film Action’

1 November 2012
Arnolfini, Bristol

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/kode9-mfo-ms-haptic-aura-satz-ben-russell

8 June 2013
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway
Machine Dreams, nyMusikk's annual festival of adventurous music

with live music by Anton Lukoszevieze and Maja Ratkje

22 September 2014
Screened as part of ‘Transform: Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz’, Screenings and conversation at Tate Britain, London

Exhibitions:

5 Sep - 20 Oct 2013
'In and Out of Synch' exhibited as a looped 16mm film installation in 'Nicola Ellis & Aura Satz'
Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

CONTACT

LINKS

AURA SATZ

IN AND OUT OF SYNCH

A 16mm film and performance by Aura Satz

Aura Satz, In and Out of Synch

'In and Out of Synch' performed at The Tanks, Tate Modern. Photo: Gabrielle Fonseca Johnson/Tate Photography, 2012, copyright Tate Photography

Performances and Screenings:

27 October 2012 Premiere at Tate OIL TANKS, as part of ‘Playing in the Shadows: Film Action’

1 November 2012 Arnolfini, Bristol

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/kode9-mfo-ms-haptic-aura-satz-ben-russell

8 June 2013 Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway Machine Dreams, nyMusikk's annual festival of adventurous music

with live music by Anton Lukoszevieze and Maja Ratkje

22 September 2014 Screened as part of ‘Transform: Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz’, Screenings and conversation at Tate Britain, London

Exhibitions:

5 Sep - 20 Oct 2013 'In and Out of Synch' exhibited as a looped 16mm film installation in 'Nicola Ellis & Aura Satz' Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

CONTACT

LINKS

27 October 2012
Premiere at Tate OIL TANKS, as part of ‘Playing in the Shadows: Film Action’

1 November 2012
Arnolfini, Bristol

8 June 2013
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway
Machine Dreams, nyMusikk's annual festival of adventurous music

22 September 2014
Screened as part of ‘Transform: Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz’, Screenings and conversation at Tate Britain, London

5 Sep - 20 Oct 2013
'In and Out of Synch' exhibited as a looped 16mm film installation in 'Nicola Ellis & Aura Satz'
Castlefield Gallery, Manchester