Restless eye

David Neumann / ABG
Concept Notes
restless eye 2012

Quick flashes.

We start in a pastoral place. Where Gordon derives his inspiration becomes the first video setting.
Using his drawings as a sort of slide show we formalize a relationship to video that we then turn from family slideshow to data flow to movie to boardroom presentation all while introducing the idea of data corruption.

Sound - on room tone. We started with a mix outside the studio which mixed internal with external space at will. This becomes the bed of sound / noise that all things come from. Ultimately we use the noise bed of Gemini 4-8 mission recordings with direct speech removed. Crosswalk and telephony clicks are kept in place but major communications or mission specific language and motifs are removed.

Then the über voice the world of corporate feelinglessness
Broadcasting from here to here.
The beginning of the movie contact.
The camera zooms out from contemporary earth while picking up radio and television signals of te 1990s. It keeps tracking back into space until we hear the 70s-40s and finally silence.

David says the act of changing or describing scenes is doing dramaturgy in retrospect. You build information from a nonsensical starting point.

The language of that intro section
Allows us to connect 19th century with NASA of the Gemini ’60s.

That sound.
Chekhov. Cherry orchard.
Should this be a cued playback of the same words recorded and live sync is tried?
The house
Is made of strings
A sketch in pencil
Burned strings in a stack.
Potassium nitrate on aluminum.
Record strings burning under tension.

A type of synesthesia. The sound of the other side of a tape that you can hear barely from your side. Crosstalk. Astronauts. Unintended communications. Conflated data.

“A sound is heard” - actors react. Beat. Sometimes this is real. Sometimes it is imagined.

Creaks. Changing the architecture with sound.

We mix recorded and live speech to create a feeling of artifice.

Andrew solo is the monolog. We continue with the pastiche of style ending up in some sort of conference room/confessional. The piece can take a wild and deeply personal turn here either in earnest or jokingly. It doesn’t matter how or where the audience follows because we will be entering a dance. From the destruction of the carpet we hear the confused rambling of a space traveler, recordings of Gemini and explorer carrier tones, and the beginning of a section of detuning binaural sinewaves.

Break.
Song. Weird NJ story. Weird dance. The combination of movement styles here has never quite been something I knew what to do with so David and sibyl took over and it seemed to be a good place for the weird song.

The brainwaves control the moving lights in the room. Sound returns to something from the electronic place. More gemini sounds, mixed with fragments of the four tops and marvin Gaye / Tammy. 30ms snips of Motown acapellas to great block chords but with the thinness of human voice.

Jeremy solo is the chair. Object overwhelms performer / Mechanical advantage.

Vicoria solo is digital vectors. Pop/lock, antigravity.

Kennis solo is newtonian fluids, birds tumbling from the sky.

Transitioning bird sounds into tape sounds.

What plays vs what reads.

Where there is silence and where there is static.

Speaker system.
Some speaker upstage.
Some outside the theater offstage. A TL driver or sonotube speaker.
Main system but no lower fills. Everything should sound like it is coming from the sky.

How to get from place to place Is not as important as defining where each place is. Hard cuts and processor lags are ok if they help shift focus.

Mahler.

Andrew/Neal crushing/destroying sound. Stacked 60hz sinewaves over car crash sounds making huge tremelo effects when they hit the limiting stage. This sounds more like crushing to me because when you imagine destroying something with your hands your focus is immense and the sound cannot be realistic. They are like Norse gods or 6-year olds in a sandbox. Their impact has to be massive, but clearly internal.