Shipping Control

Ben Vida’s first solo exhibition will be opening tonight at Audio Video Arts (AVA).  Reception from 8-8PM.  The show runs from April 13- May 12th.

The four pieces that make up Slipping Control,
the video, book, object and poster, were all
derived from the same source material, the text
piece Tztztztzt Î Í Í….

Composed to act as a score, a sound piece and as raw data for electronic control source, Tztztztzt Î Í Í… became the intrinsic element that tied all of these works together. I was interested in the rhythm of speaking, interested in using the voice to create rhythmic patterns that would inevitably break out of time and become asymmetrical and awkward. I wanted to create one set of control sources (the text) and run them through a bunch of different systems (the video, the book, the record etc) and see how the original source material morphed and changed as it manifested in these different modalities. The process of developing each unique work involved setting of control paths for the text to be processed though. In terms of this path the first step after writing the text was to find the primary filter of interpretation and translation that would start this process of slipping control – and this is where Tyondai and Sara come in…

A Control Path may look something like this:

Text > Performer/Vocalist > Voiced Recording > Electronic Analysis > Reconfigured

Text > Audio Synthesis > LP Record.

Or maybe like this:

Text > Performer/Vocalist > Video/Audio Recording > Electronic Analysis > Audio Synthesis > Video Editing > Color Synthesis > Video Installation.

Or this:

Text > Performer/Vocalist > Video/Audio Recording > Electronic Analysis > Audio Synthesis > Video Editing > Color Synthesis > Video Installation > Color Field Panel Display.

Or more simply:

Text > Poster

Text by Ben Vida