SemiConductor: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt
Brilliant Noise | 2006 | 9:38mins (looped) | 3 channel DVD projection | UK
Semiconductor make moving image works which reveal our physical world in flux; cities in motion, shifting landscapes and systems in chaos. Since 1999 UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt have worked with digital animation to transcend the constraints of time, scale and natural forces, they explore the world beyond human experience questioning our very existence. Central to these works is the role of sound, which becomes synonymous with the image, as it creates, controls and deciphers it; exploring resonance, through the natural order of things. Their award winning work has been exhibited extensively from Tate Britain and ICA London to the San Francisco Film Festival, Mutek Montreal and the Venice Biennale. In 2001 they broke the mold by releasing their works on DVD; this has been followed up with Worlds in Flux a new DVD on Fat Cat Records which accompanies their 2007 UK touring exhibition, Brilliant Noise. Recent fellowships and residencies have supported site-specific work, including research and experimentation at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratories UC Berkeley, California.
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Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the suns finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This black and white grainy quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, usually hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected by satellites orbiting the Earth as single frames, or files of information, that are then reorganised into spectral sequences. The soundtrack brings to light the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating the intensity of the brightness into audio manipulation.
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