murmur

roundabout

7.5 minutes

© 2010

 

A collaborative work by:
Peter Byrne and Carole Woodlock: image, animation
and editing; and,
Allan Schindler: music score
Mastered on DVCAM

CONTACT:
Peter Byrne: pjbfaa@rit.edu
Allan Schindler: allan@ecmc.rochester.edu

roundabout is an inquiry into landscape and memory, movement and flow. The visual imagery employs gesture, layering, randomness, pattern and color to evoke a sense of becoming. Live action footage, with hand-drawn and computer generated composite animation sequences come together in order to establish a shifting and layered sense of time and place. Interrupting ones sense of balance and location, a cascade of imagery interweaves and sweeps on a circuitous journey. A fragmented sense of place evokes a shifting center and viewpoint in which we seek to unearth the interaction and collapsing of virtual and real spaces.

Despite frequent variations in tempo and pace, occasional use of ambiguous tempi (seemingly fast and slow at the same time) and passages employing two or more simultaneous tempi in different layers, the computer-generated music is designed to convey a sense of continuous motion and gravitation, perhaps suggestive of the current of a river or, alternatively, of tidal-like fluctuations in inflow and outflow. The music employs 19 tone equal temperament throughout, so some of the chordal progressions and melodic lines initially may sound "pinched," piquant or aberrant, while other passages might suggest a hollow or "distant" quality owing to the use of acoustically pure (and thus hollow-sounding) intervals afforded by this tuning system.