Analogue

World premiere at SPOR festival, May 2011

Performed at Ultima festival, 2012.

As part of the British composer Joanna Bailie’s “Artist in Residence” stay in Denmark, she has composed a new piece for SCENATET.
Although ‘Analogue’ musically and in terms of expression is a very subtle and refined work, the setup and overall experience of the piece is spectacular and grandiose. Baille creates a live camera obscura effect, where the audience is placed in a completely dark room and the ensemble in an extremely bright room next to it. Via small holes between the two rooms, the image of what goes on in the room next to audience is transported to a screen (upside down) in front of the audience. The subtleness and delicacy of the images is truly astonishing and a magical experience. Furthermore Baille translates the theory of camera obscura directly from light to sound creating music from sounds recorded outside the concert rooms and ‘filtered’ through instrumentation.
According to the composer herself the work is “a kind of musical theater that examines the parallels between sound and image, they are real, potential or imaginary.”
The work is written for amplified string trio, electronics and camera obscura.

The theatrical dimension becomes just as tangibly real as it is fantastical and unreal. A gap opens up between sound, gesture and touch at the same time as the shadow images link this together.

Andreas Engström, NUTIDA MUSIK 2, 2011