Reiterate, rerun, repeat
(2021)
author(s): Michael Duch, Jeremy Welsh
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
Repetition plays a central role in many musical styles and genres. Repetition, rhythm and patterns also play an important part in the visual arts. Here we will show, examine and discuss repetition as a method and main musical element, as well as their correlation with moving images, in a series of audio-visual works we have been working on together since 2016.
Accumulator is one such project and will be the main focus here, where not only repetition, rhythm and patterns appear as musical and visual elements, but is used as an artistic method in itself when repeating performances of a similar material, documenting each one of them and adding the individual performances as layers creating a dense audio-visual orchestral solo performance.
As well as temporal repetition, Accumulator repeats in the spatial dimension, where the staging of a performance features the live performer multiplied, as he is accompanied by pre-recorded video images of himself. According to the spatial characteristics of the given performance space, this repetition of the performer may be frontal / two dimensional, or may extend across several surfaces, creating a surround projection in which the live performer is contained.