_Articulation of Promise
_Amy Cunningham (2012)
Single screen HD Video
Single screen HD Video
_‘Articulation of Promise’ by Amy Cunningham is part of a series of multimedia artworks in which she investigates the role of women in the assimilation of pioneering technology into culture. On this occasion a single screen video work is the result of an intervention by the artist into the gallery space and was made in response to the exhibition Peter Vogel: The Sound of Shadows, which took place at the SBT Gallery, University of Brighton, October 2011.
The first electronic musical instruments to emit sound without using physical contact were invented by Leon Theremin in the early 20th century. The first and most well known performers of these instruments were women: Clara Rockmore and Lucie Bigelow Rosen in the 1930’s and then Lydia Kavina who, taught by Theremin is currently the leading performer of this instrument. The instrument influential in the development of synthesised music, has also an association with obsolescence, the B-movie film score, the fearful sound of the unknown source, the future from the perspective of the past. Historical photographs of women playing the Theremin and the Terpsitone are the visual score from which Cunningham creates tableaux, in which the performer of an instrument from the past, plays electronic instruments of the present, instruments which themselves have a visual aesthetic reminiscent of early modernism – the interactive sculptures of artist Peter Vogel. The reconstructions in the tableaux embrace what is lost in translation between event, photograph and performer and are not intended to be exact visual representations of the photographs, but attempt to replicate the position of the body and the hands of the performers. These hand and body positions when placed next to the Vogel sculptures sometimes trigger the components in them to move, emit sound or light up. In the conflation of Theremin performer and electronic sculpture, questions are posed about the relationship between an operator and a machine, the coded nature of signals and gestures. A semaphore hand-signal, a sorcerer, and a practitioner of martial art are suggested. An effect without an apparent cause. |
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Amy's silent film Articulation of Promise can be watched on vimeo