“The ‘Hunting Horn and Rotation Studies’ are a
group of 5 audiovisual digital art pieces made with an antique French hunting
horn. Each piece is designed to be read by a computer as both a visual still
image an audio track, these two readings arising from the same file in each
case. The computer sees the two readings as one but they are presented here
separately for human observers.”
Take a look at that cover image up there, and
you can sort of get what the liner notes are talking about. Each fragment of
the front cover is one of the five visual pieces, and the cassette itself comes
with the full pieces printed on cardstock. Unfortunately, as a human person and
not a computer, I must, as suggested, have the visuals and the audio separated
to observe them. Amazing that a computer program takes a visual piece of art
and also processes it as sound. Who thought of doing that – whose idea was it
to painstakingly create something that human beings can’t even properly ingest
without cybernetic brain implants (probably)?
Massimo Magee, that’s who.
I’m familiar with the London-based artist
because of his work with Tony Irving on “The Fog,” released by Astral Spirits
last February, but he’s got a larger body of work that it’s probably imperative
I check out. “Hunting Horn and Rotation Studies” features the titular antique
instrument, though, and I keep reading it as a “French horn,” which it’s not; it’s
this. What results could only be some weird computer spectrum of sound, an
interpretation that’s more surprising than anything. From the twitchy kinetic
energy of “Study I” to the micro glitch of “Study IV,” then the twitchy micro
glitch of Study III to the frightened ambient of “Study II, “Hunting Horn and
Rotation Studies” never stops evolving, which is exactly what you want it to
do. Computers aren’t here to regurgitate the status quo – they’re here to blow
your mind when manipulated by forward-thinking humans. Magee’s one of those.
Probably a cyborg too.
--Ryan
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