Trilogy
Presented by: Paul Botelho, Assistant Professor of Music at Bucknell University & Russell J. Chartier, video artist
March 31 – May 30
This exhibition is a program of the Connections Gallery: Experiments in Community Curating
The three video art works, CONFINED-10-01-2 (2009), Devil on a Dam (2010), and 00:06:24:11 (2012), share technological and aesthetic methodologies used by the collaborators, composer Paul J. Botelho and video artist Russell J. Chartier, exclusively for the trilogy.
The musical aspect of the set is comprised of fragmented audio samples which were input into software, authored by the composer, which “shattered” the input sound into a user-defined number of fragments in a stochastic rhythm. The textures generated through the software were then layered, along with other manipulated and found sounds, to create the musical component of the works.
The video aspect of the pieces is composed of densely layered, distorted satellite transmissions, rescanned images, digital and analog feedback, and other video manipulations.
The collaboration between the composer and video artist exploits the principle of synchronicity, i.e. neither artist works directly with one another’s work during the collaboration. Only the specific duration of the piece is agreed upon and no other communication in regard to the work is made during the collaboration. Solely upon the completion of both the video and music components is the work realized. The artists call this process a collective subconscious, a term which refers not only to the exclusionary creative actions which take place in their collaborative effort, but more broadly as the commonality that permeates betwixt the artists and those close to them.