.
Commissioned by Zeitkratzer Ensemble and Asphodel Records (San Francisco), Lillevan created moving imagery for this composition inspired by the music of Xenakis, for performance and for the DVD release on Asphodel (2007).
Directed and created by Lillevan, the video is inspired by Xenakis’ mathematical compositional technique.
Based on photographs and film fragments of the Iranian city of Persepolis, the source material is manipulated beyond recognition, it is the raw material for a full-length film which organically reflects the dynamic intensity of Xenakis[a]live!. The moving imagery is a twisted collage which reflects and accompanies the intense textures of the musical composition.
It also reflects my state of mind while working on this piece: the film was composed and animated between trips to heart clinics and specialists during the summer and fall of 2005, as I was suffering from a heart muscle infection (myocarditis). Numerous experiences in Magnetic Resonance & Computed Axial Tomography scan devices proved very inspirational…
Duration of film and music: circa 52mins
www.zeitkratzer.de
www.asphodel.com
QUICKTIME COMING SOON
Excerpt of Review in Textura:
‘Unlike the Metal Machine Music DVD, the video presentation by Lillevan doesn’t include footage of the ensemble. Instead, the German video artist uses photographs and film fragments of the Iranian city of Persepolis as source material, though his treatments render the material unrecognizable as such. The piece begins with vertical bars of mutating colour and pattern that expand and contract in time to the music in a style not dissimilar from the video work included in Rechenzentrum’s 2003 release Director’s Cut.’
‘Eventually the bars blend into a rectangular display of suggestive pictorial character where horizontals move in and out of focus and the multi-layered screen elements become copper, hair-like patterns that rapidly criss-cross at various angles.’
‘Finely-detailed black and gold details then crowd the screen, mutating like minute organisms. In its later stages, the images come into clearer focus though never so much that they can be identified as literal, real-world elements.’
‘Having flirted with recognizability, the visuals return to the abstract form of the beginning. Lillevan’s piece is a spectacularly realized wedding of visuals and sound that captivates from start to finish.’
Textura, September 2007
QUICKTIME COMING SOON