Michel Chion describes the term synchresis as… “the forging between something one sees and something one hears - it is the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when these occur at exactly the same time. Synchresis is an acronym formed by telescoping together the two words synchronism and synthesis”. (excerpt from: http://filmsound.org/chion/sync.htm)

ANAT, the Australian Network for Art and Technology has just launched its latest copy of Filter magazine (issue 66, [southern] summer 2007) with Synchresis the theme, with a special release DVD, and the launch (and xmas party) tonight at the Chauvel cinema in Paddington…

The launch featured masterful live performances from Peter Newman, Ian Andrews and Robin Fox. Fox in particular has blown me away yet again with new aural/visual brain-warping material drawn from laptop and relic of a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope (that induces quite some nostalgia for me as it’s the same model as ones I used to do electronic labs on in the mid 90s). Since I last saw the oscilloscope set, a few of his laser shows ago, the camera trained on the CRO seems to have zoomed closer to the dot that pulses with rough, almost DC modulations, beginning the set. The hazy grain of the CRO’s phosphors are accentuated with the green brightness gradients of arrhythmia-inducing, hard edged bass signals pumping from the laptop. The dot begins to pop around the screen on a coiled trajectory that leaves a sheen prompting me to wonder if this is still the analogue oscilloscope or some fantastic jitter-generated pixels driven by the tetchy sounds. Some time later, traces of earlier sets appear, yet the sounds are much faster, less tethered, yet more tightly mobile if that’s possible, jerked from image to image…. and I realise that in this synchresis, not only are the images made by the sounds, but I think the sounds are probably also made by the images - not in the realtime sense, but in the process of composition of the possibilities. It dawns on me that the sonic assault strikes these ears as quite novel itself - even without its visual counterpart - and that, while the Backscatter release made it clear that sounds were designed to make good images, this fact and much exploration has brought new sounds as well. The search for new images from the sounds and the design of improvisation possibilities has also created new electronic music, let alone this incredible aural-visual experience.

A set of photos from the Synchresis performance are up on my flickr. [posted by Nick Mariette on Sonic Surrounds]