Lazzaro Lasagna
You never sent me the USB key I ordered you. And never answered me neither. You can still fix this.
Favorite track: turning energy into motion.
The soundtrack of the audiovisual art piece Apophenia by Lasse Gudmand-Høyer.
Entrancing noise, apophenic visuals, and provoking presentations.
Apophenia is a sonically centred multidisciplinary work, that seeks to explore the in between and parallels of, sound-experience, performance, participation and visualisation. The project is anchored by a recurring soundtrack that takes the form of a collaborative, predominantly industrial, techno production, curated by Lasse Gudmand-Høyer. Meaningful patterns emerge in the rhythmic composition of vacuous noise, that simultaneously feel deeply disturbing and intensely entrancing. The 12 tracks, produced by a mix of Copenhageners- and internationals, lay the sonic foundation for Apophenia's two pillar components - an enigmatic video exhibition and a staged, performative rave. The album captures feelings of intense apophenia, visualised as movement of bodies in a highly instinctive, Rorschach's inkblot-like, diversity of interpretation.
The first physically manifested element of the project is a visual exhibition at inter.pblc. This experience, dubbed by the vacuous and entrancing soundtrack, consists of a film displayed on a large LED screen and a virtual reality headset. The video acts as an enigmatic, yet engaging, examination of the, otherwise reserved, rave topography. It features a collection of moving bodies, collectively, yet separately, entranced by the apophenic noise around them. Seeing these bodies and their movement, captured through a 360 degree camera lens, allows the viewer to attain a deeply immersive perspective from an active participant’s point of view. The film itself spawns a unique and eerie feeling, among the observer, that oscillates between that of a non-existing surveillant and a deeply involved participant. The VR headset functions, not as a central aspect of the exhibition, but merely as a dynamic angling tool that decides the video's rotational point of view. The purpose of the exhibition is to display a collection of moving bodies in a catalog-like display of conceptual personas. It acts as a teaser for the final aspect of the project.
Apophenia's culminating element is a rave at Basement in Copenhagen. Here, the soundtrack meets the visual representation of the exhibition in the most literal way. At its' center, this concluding part of the work is an exercise in connecting the parallels between sound-experience, performance, -participation and -visualisation, in the context of what seems to be no more and no less than a rave party. Yet, the event itself is staged with a performance-like auction of the conceptual ownership of the moving bodies, displayed at the inter.pblc exhibition, where all profits are donated to charity. The act, which in itself seems ethically controversial, seeks to comment on the duality of activism and monetisation by selling bodies as concepts, who, in the specific scenario, are no different than the observer, turned active participant.
credits
released July 29, 2021
Mastering: CTRLS
Photography: Andreas Weng Philllipsen
Graphic design: Frederik Galsgaard
Text: Mathias Kristensen
The latest compilation from Barcelona label House of (S)PUNK features delicate ambient, groovy neo-rave, emotional hyperpop and more. Bandcamp New & Notable May 23, 2023