Older Works « Bob Levene

Older Works

Point of Contact

Performance, 2001 (15m approx)

Still from video documentation of Point of Contact

Two speakers are placed upright on the floor covered by a large sheet of clear perspex, two contact microphones rest on top and create a constant feedback loop that vibrates sound through the Perspex. By standing on top and slowly moving my body the pressure and amount of contact is altered which changes the quality of the sound.

At the time I had become interested in what made a musical performance, what were the tools of music making and what were the definitions of improvisation. I found myself taking away and stripping down the set until I was left with the speaker and microphone and the sounds they make (feedback). My movements are dictated by the sounds, it becomes a chasing game in which I find a sound I like and try to maintain it. The work plays with the unwanted feedback and uses it at the heart of the piece, trying to control and manipulate it.

Edited extracts from video documentation of Point of Contact

String Pattern

Short Film 2004 (3m 34s)

String Pattern
Still from original single shot video

String Pattern animates four short pieces of string into an elegant dance, each playing off of one another. Using video to animate frame by frame and layer the image, I orchestrate the string and explore the relationship between the sound and image. The following text is taken from Vivid and Mac in Birmingham’s 2004 brochure Smoke and Mirrors. [String Pattern] questions the mechanics of cinematic illusion. Also in question here is the relationship between sound and vision which is generally considered to be two separate processes of perception. – It plays with the associations and expectations often experienced in cinema by the unity of image and sound.

Edited extracts from String Pattern

Mexico Field Recordings

Audio 2003/4

In September 2003 I went on a three-month Arts Council International Fellowship in Colima, Mexico, I ended up staying for a further two months and in December Pete McPartlan joined me and we continued traveling. Mexico is a beautifully noisy place, a cacophony of trumpets, dogs, bells, fireworks. Here are some audio recordings from our travels.

Band playing at the Fiesta on Independence Day, Colima

Mayors Speech, Independence Day, Colima

Daytime Fireworks, San Cristobal

Rug Market Salesman, Oaxaca

Electronic Christmas Tree Decorations, Mexico City

Skidby Mill

Audio 2006 (4m 38s)

I was invited by Matt Hulse to make a new work for The Audible Picture Show where original audio works are made for a dark cinema. I made Skidby, Ground Floor, which was a recording of Skidby Mill, Yorkshires last working Flour Mill.

Thanks to 1970’s Video Art

Performance to Camera / Short Video 2000 (3m 36s)
Thanks to 1970’s Video Art
Still from video

Whilst the track Song for Sugar Spun Sister by The Stone Roses plays through the speaker, I slowly fill the cone up with sugar. Starting with only a few grains jumping and dancing around frantically,the sugar eventually begins to distort and muffle the sound, by the end the speaker is struggling to move under the weight and the sound of the sugar and mechanics is more audible than the song.

Thanks to 1970’s Video Art was a nod to the work of that time which I had become interested in, particularly of Gary Hills 1978 work Sounding in which he uses a speaker and his own voice to explore the translation of image into sound and sound into image. Thanks was more of a comment on recording technology and how the quality of recorded sound has changed since its invention, for me the work was more about listening to music in my bedroom as a teenager and all that came with it as well as phenomenology of sound and physicality of the object.

Edited extracts from video