singing eye > INDICTUS, a bird choreography

INDICTUS, a bird choreography 2002
Ode to Escher
a bird choreography in three movements

made for Kate Neal
Music Kate Neal
Image Mendel Hardeman
Duration 16'57"
Original Format video DV - PAL, 4:3, with live music

INDICTUS takes place at the verge of technology. It is an étude which originated from a search for the technical extremes of video. The generation, accumulation and interaction of noise-, interference- and feedback patterns creates a series of intriguing and unexpected images.
Those images convey a concealed poetical beauty, and rise from the world of abstraction through the introduction of a slowly flying bird. While the treatment of this bird may in some places recall Muybridge's early photography motion studies, the combination of the two elements creates something entirely new - images born out of pure electricity suddenly metamorphose into a wide, inhabitable world.

1st movement - an environment made up from blocks in pure black and pure white, excluding all intermediate shades - a chessboard that slowly moves towards the background, until its blocks become smaller than a pixel, which leads to an out-of-control explosion of colour created by high-frequency interference of the white and black into the colour-coding region of the video signal. The colours which can be seen are not in the original video footage itself, but rather, originate during the processes of analogue signal conversion and projection. The colour patterns created are different for different types of TV monitors and projectors. On some, they can be very interesting and beautiful, while others may show barely any colour at all - all depends on the amount of interference produced within each device.
2nd movement - a short incursion into different sorts of video feedback, through changing colors and textures, guided by a simple choreography of a gradually increasing number of birds.
3rd movement - a wide formation of birds flies through a sky of tranquil video noise, which suddenly breaks open to reveal a colourful labirinth of rotating patterns generated by mistuned video feedback. One bird is locked up in a ball of electronic feedback, which slowly dissolves into a calm, blue sea.

performance history
05.06.02, Anton Schönbergzaal, Den Haag
11.04.03, World Wide Warehouse, Melbourne, Australia
12.10.05, Melbourne Festival, Australia