Mixing contemporary, electronic, club and Far-Eastern music, and bringing to mind great names from the history of 20th-century music – Xenakis, Scelsi, Feldman and Cage –, David Shea's rich experience as a composer stems from his 20 years participation in the New York musical avant-garde scene, also drawing inspiration from literature, theatre and cinema. One of the role models he cites is Bernard Herrmann, and, from the very first notes of 2001 – A Soundfilm in Eight Acts, we are in fact confronted with the cinematographic quality of his music, underlined by the combination of words in the title Soundfilm, which immediately conjures up a visual process of creating mental images from the music being played. The eight acts recall stages in a purely musical film. These acts roll on from one to the next, like a string of narrative. The artist also conveys a clear notion of image in his compositions by reversing the role that film composers normally play. Composers work from the filmed image, whereas Shea's interpretations imply a visual image, thus producing a “sound image”. Right from the start, the sweeping rhythm accentuates the atmosphere of suspense as in an American thriller. Then, with pounding repetition the theme pulsates faster. The musical sequences follow on from each other recalling various popular film genres: the western (cowboy fights), the war film (gunfire and the sound of Japanese voices) and the cartoon film (Tex Avery-style). Certain sequences have a techno beat, others are more jazzy or bossa-nova, peppered with lyrical moments as in a musical. From the sound of a piano to the sounds of animals and nocturnal birds, from enchanting airs to uncanny tones, from oneiric crescendos to vocal diminuendos, the artist literally transports the listener/viewer into a strange world in which each element of the musical score surges forth to nourish the absent image which, paradoxically, is evoked even more clearly as a result. His role, which he defines as “composer in the eye of music”, lies “between intuitive improvisation and appropriation through effects of collage”. In order to conjure up as near as possible a feeling of cinema, David Shea created a dark-room effect which became the exhibition model. “The projection of the music is both performance and installation in perpetual transformation,” he stresses. “The seats placed in front of the sampler are surrounded by high-tech speakers that maximize the spatiality of sound. This is one of the ways of sampling and coming into contact with the sound equipment. We are led into the visual part of our brain in which the whole process unfolds.” It is precisely by using this visual part of the brain that 2001 – A Soundfilm in Eight Acts may be conceived as a spatial and temporal structure; an evolving, experimental piece.

Elvan Zabunyan

Translated by Diana Tamlyn