The film and sound installation The Trembling Line explores visual and acoustic echoes between decipherable musical gestures and abstract patterning, orchestral swells and extreme high-speed slow-motion close-ups of strings and percussion. It features a score by Leo Grant and a multichannel audio system by the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton.

Violin bows appear as angular lines cutting across the screen in rhythmic sequences, like a swarm of insects or windmills. Strings vibrate, unsettled in a state of continuous oscillation. Formal continuities are drawn out between throbbing slowed-down vibrations and real-time musical sequences, as the trembling pace of a tremolo becomes a relentless pulse. The multi-channel speaker array is devised as an intimate sound spatialisation system in which each element of sound can be pried apart and reconfigured, to create a dynamically disorienting sonic experience. It features small swarms of sounds, amplified as they gush though the sphere, intricate musical gestures travelling in circular and counterpoint patterns, and dense surges of tremolo rolling across the acoustic range. The sound sphere recalls an inverted fly's compound eye, which turns inwards onto the listener. It becomes the inside of a musical instrument, an acoustic envelope or cage of sorts, through which viewers are invited to experience the film and generate cross-sensory connections and counterpoints between the sound and the visuals.

28-29 April 2018

Binaural version installed as part of F(T) festival, hosted at Radialsystem V, Berlin

f(t) stands for 'function of time' (Zeitfunktion). The two day festival will highlight alternative concepts of time in music: irregular metres, miniatures, works of gargantuan duration, idiosyncratic patterns, new practices for historic instruments and obsolete media, humanised machine time, mechanised improvisation, space-time relations in close proximity and at vast distance... and much more.

The festival will feature a densely programmed concert schedule in Radialsystem V's main halls, as well as special formats and installations in its more intimate upstairs studios. A mechanical player piano will be set up in the foyer, thus providing five distinct spaces for concerts, DJ sets, music performances and audiovisual installations for the audience to explore.

The programme features artists from eleven nations and of diverse artistic backgrounds, including electronic musicians, bands, baroque and new music instrumentalists, improvisors, DJs and visual artists. Highlights include performances by Shackleton, members of Ensemble Modern, Rrose and SOS Gunver Ryberg. Several premieres will be performed, including commissioned works by Stefan Goldmann and KiNK. Further world and German premieres include works by Cory Arcangel, Elektro Guzzi & Margret Koll and Aura Satz.

3-4 Feb 2023

Exhibition of 'The Trembling Line' as part of Strom festival for electronic music at Berliner Philharmoniker, Berlin

Including Aura Satz, Blawan, Hauschka + Kai Angermann, Juan Atkins, MARCEL DETTMANN, Nidia, Studio Robert Henke pres. CBM 8032 AV, transformed acoustix (members of Berliner Philharmoniker + Simon Stockhausen), Stefan Goldmann, upsammy, Wolfgang Voigt pres. GAS

CREDITS:

The Trembling Line is the result of Aura Satz's year as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Southampton, funded by The Leverhulme Trust and the university. The residency represents an innovative collaboration between the artist, the Department of Music and the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) that explores the conceptual translations between different art-forms, acoustics and technologies, and reflects ongoing exchanges between the composers, performers and acoustic engineering staff and students.