In and Out of Synch is a filmic performance which centres around the optical printing of soundtracks, committing to 16mm film a technology on the verge of extinction, entombing and encrypting its own language onto itself. Shot at the post-production facilities of Pinewood studios, London, the close-up sequences feature abstract patterns of sound encoded as light, printed onto the soundtrack area of the filmstrip. The film features the quivering light of a 16mm mono and a 35mm stereo optical sound camera, providing a seismic glimpse at a sound-wave in formation, on occasions flashing like a stroboscopic Rorschach inkblot.

Both mesmerizing and assaulting the senses, the visually hypnotic patterns are disrupted by the voiceover, scripted in dialogue with the artist and filmmaker Lis Rhodes, whose expanded cinema installation using optical sound is on display in The Tanks. The two voices alternate and coincide, interrogating the sound-image synchronicity and correlation with poetic expressions. The film is accompanied by a live musical performance which animates a Ruben’s tube, a device which similarly modulates light in response to sound, creating spectacular waves of flames. In parallel to the film’s exploration of sound encoded as light, the event features sound encoded as fire; a more primal, dramatic, and almost pre-cinematic counterpart of the same principle of sound as light.

For the inaugural version at the Tanks, the live performance features the vocals of interdisciplinary artist Mikhail Karikis and Anton Lukoszevieze on cello. This performance is linked to the symposium Playing in the Shadows, exploring the subterranean darkness of The Tanks and radical experiments in projection and performance.

Filmed, directed and edited by Aura Satz Scripted in dialogue with Lis Rhodes Voiceover Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz DP Bevis Bowden Dubbing mixer Gernot Fuhrmann Funded by Arts Council England, Tate Modern, Arnolfini and private donations Support in kind from Pinewood Studios Special thanks to Martin Sawyer, Jason Stevens, Simon Hill at Pinewood; Len Thornton and Tim Sidell, and Jackie and Peter Stewart.

Performances and Screenings:

27 October 2012

Premiere at Tate OIL TANKS, as part of ‘Playing in the Shadows: Film Action’

with live music by Anton Lukoszevieze and Mikhail Karikis

1 November 2012

Arnolfini, Bristol

with live music by Anton Lukoszevieze

Aura Satz was interviewed by Alastair Cameron on the occasion of her performance of 'In and Out of Synch' at the four-day event Visionary Kingdom at Arnolfini, November 2012.

8 June 2013

Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway

Machine Dreams, nyMusikk's annual festival of adventurous music

Machine Dreams is a festival exploring the machine in all its glory. Not only as a paean to obsolete mechanisms and the soundscape that disappears with them, but as a celebration of the machine as a model for thinking. Only Connect brings you celebrations of the vanishing white noise between FM stations where voices are heard fading in and out of range; an examination of the vocoder, a human-voice scrambling machine born within the US military which went on to define the sound of electro; explorations of time machines; mechanical pianos; machines transforming images into sound and vice versa; customised sonic tools as well as obsolete technology which seemed to offer the possibility of communication with another world altogether. The 'progress' which machines are said to bring has always had its supporters and its critics. Through our diverse programme, we hope to examine the machine through multiple perspectives: both as a utopian construction built to improve lives, and as a dehumanizing force undermining something essential about society. Plus, we will look at ways in which people and machines are learning to live together, creatively and inventively. And at Only Connect, all of this, of course, is approached via the medium of music and sound, which, perhaps more than any other art form, has been profoundly affected by the enormous transformations of the machine age.

22 September 2014

Screened as part of ‘Transform: Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz’, Screenings and conversation at Tate Britain, London

Transform launches with an intimate dialogue between two innovative artists. Through existing films and never-before-seen works in progress, Aura Satz and Lis Rhodes will discuss how their respective practices explore the materiality of film alongside themes of notation, experimentation and agency. Curated by Zoe Whitley.

Download the 'Transform: Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz' programme notes here http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/film/transform-lis-rhodes-and-aura-satz

3-7 October 2013

Screened at the 51st New York Film Festival, 'Views from the Avant-garde', curated by Mark McElhatten

Our popular yearly touchstone for experimental film returns with 45 programs in glorious Super-8, 16mm and 35mm film and HD formats. Many familiar faces have returned and this year's slate feature 45 new artists as well as several mini-retrospectives of artists including, Aura Satz, Lois Patino, Sandro Aguilar, and Jean-Paul Kelly. Views will also offer special tributes to the late Stom Sogo and Anne Robertson, whose work is a testimony to the power of a cinema that is fearless, confidential and inextinguishable. Curated by Mark McElhatten.

13 May 2015

'Soundfigures: Films by Aura Satz'

A selection of films by Aura Satz, programmed by Michele Smith, DIM Cinema, Vancouver Cinametheque

(Near) extinct technologies make sound visible in this program of shorts by London-based artist Aura Satz that delve into ideas of knowledge, memory, and communication. On a Chladni Plate, a device that marked the birth of acoustics, grains of sand, moving like Busby Berkeley dancers, form intricate patterns in response to changing sound frequencies, their shapes recalling the utopian quest for a 'pure,' onomatopoeic alphabet. Wax cylinder recordings combine with modern scientific instruments to animate a text by Rainer Maria Rilke on the possibility of hearing the dead by playing their skulls with a gramophone needle. A Ruben's Tube translates a histrionic voice-over into a standing wave of small flames, provoking unexpected associations, from the biblical burning bush to various acts of ventriloquism in pop culture. Breaking its long silence, the Oramics Machine plays hand-drawn compositions by its inventor, electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram. Kaleidoscopic effects in the lamphouse of a 35mm film printer honour Natalie Kalmus, colour consultant on masterpieces of the Technicolor era. Chromatic distortions in early colour-film tests are revealed through the eyes of the George Eastman family and old Hollywood stars. In a dramatic finale, Satz and experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes encode their voices as abstract light patterns on 16mm mono and 35mm stereo filmstrips in a collaborative exploration of sound-image synchronicity.

18 Feb 2016

'Between the Bullet and the Hole' (Plus Other Shorts) + Q&A at Whitechapel Gallery, London

Aura Satz presents the UK premiere of 'Between the Bullet and the Hole', her latest short film which examines the role of women in ballistic research, early computing and pattern perception in warfare. Presented alongside her works focusing on memory, notation, encryption and gender, the event also features an in conversation with special guests Morgan Quaintance and David Alan Grier.

24 March 2016

'In and Out of Synch', an evening of films and sound with Aura Satz, presented by Liquid Architecture and Gertrude Contemporary

Satz presents works that explore the relationship between esoteric technologies (Chladni plate, Rubens' tube, theremin, mechanical music machines, phonographs, dial tones, drawn/optical sound) and the human body (heightened perception, sensory disorientation, psychoacoustics) and how these are mediated by notation systems, languages and codes. Followed by Q&A with Joel Stern.

3 October 2016

Screening as part of Flaherty NYC, curated by Genevieve Yue and Chris Stults, Anthology Film Archives, New York

FLAHERTY NYC: WILD SOUNDS, PROGRAM 1: VOICES FROM BEYOND (Carolyn Lazard, Sara Magenheimer, Courtney Stephens, and Aura Satz in person).

Technology often 'speaks' in the voices of women, from virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa to the affectless tones of automated phone services. The various technological devices in this program, in turn, reshape what a woman's voice sounds like, from the Ruben's tube that visualizes sound in Aura Satz's IN AND OUT OF SYNCH, to the hypnotically looped 16mm optical track in Gunvor Nelson's MY NAME IS OONA, and the text-to-speech computer applications in Sara Magenheimer's SEVEN SIGNS THAT MEAN SILENCE. In Martine Syms's A PILOT FOR A SHOW ABOUT NOWHERE, Courtney Stephens's IDA WESTERN EXILE, and Carolyn Lazard's GET WELL SOON, the voices of technology and mass media alternately torment, inspire, and indelibly shape the lives of the filmmakers.

7th March 2017

'Between the Bullet and the Hole' (Plus Other Shorts) at HOME Manchester

Followed by Q&A with Chris Paul Daniels

Exhibitions:

5 Sep - 20 Oct 2013

'In and Out of Synch' exhibited as a looped 16mm film installation in 'Nicola Ellis & Aura Satz'