An immersive space situated between cinema and club. A collaboration with Sally Golding, especially made for a re-invented cinema context.

Decompression unravels in the spirit of a ‘happening’ - an encounter between audiences, space and the elements of cinematic abstraction, explored via the artists’ longstanding interest in expanded cinema and sound system culture.

Decompression brings scope to the examination of cinematic conditions by introducing live coding resulting in electronic sound and LED light compositions, and improvised direct to camera manipulations of frame rate interference, eliciting stroboscopic and sonic states. Threaded throughout the performance is an examination of the original text Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood (1970), which re-purposed, poses questions concerning contemporary technological-utopia, pressing the issue of the viewing experience and mass entertainment into relevance with regards to today’s globally connected audiences. The performance also features a ‘prepared’ light sensitive screen, tactile projection beams, and surround sound.

Decompression considers the point at which contemporary expanded cinema meets algorithmic event. An ongoing point of enquiry, the live audiovisual composition seeks to highlight: The ‘dematerialisation’ of technology via spatial activation of the sound system, programmed LED lighting and manipulated projection beams; ‘deterritorialization’ touching on the audience’s potential role as participant; and ‘detemporalization’ in which the concept of time-based media is instead driven by generative software processes.

The performance explores the frequency of light and sound as both reductive and complex - resulting in a sensory and hypnotic live set which challenges the viewer’s expectation of auditory and visual perception.

"You’d be hard-pressed to call what we saw a film, but it was most certainly an experience. If you could imagine a hypnotic cross between a club, a light show, and a cinema you’d be mostly right."

Hey Art, What’s Good?, Oct 2018

Photo by Dee Chaneva for Tyneside Cinema