Transparent Cities at REDCAT May 1

REDCAT presents Transparent Cities, a vivid portrait of Los Angeles layering sound and image field recordings with music—both recorded and performed live—offering an eloquent meditation on presence and absence, lived experience and re-presented time. Transparent Cities will be presented at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater on Tuesday, May 1, 2012.



An extraordinary collaboration by Madison Brookshire (video), April Guthrie (cello), Michael Pisaro (sound), and Cassia Streb (viola), Transparent Cities reveals patterns of light, movement, sound, and silence that emerge during the course of a single day. The video images dissolve into a ghostly translucency as the recorded audio and live music build up densely layered sonic textures—an experience of the city that is utterly strange yet eerily familiar.



Initiated in 2008 with a residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the interdisciplinary quartet set out to create a new work without assumptions for how a work of video and music "should be made." Deciding to capture the changes in light and sound that emerge during the course of a single day in Los Angeles, the artists chose two discrete locations and strategically captured sound and image field recordings for definite periods of times throughout a single day, from sunrise to sunset.



At the first location in Highland Park, eleven distinct seven-minute recordings were made in March of 2008, all from the same vantage point. During these multiple takes violaist Cassia Streb improvised accompaniment for the existing visual and aural environment off-camera, while Pisaro captured field recordings and Brookshire utilized a locked-down camera technique for static shots. This process was then repeated in June of 2008 on a hillside on the campus of California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, with the team capturing seven eleven-minute takes and cellist April Guthrie performing.



To create the visual and aural tapestry that would eventually become Transparent Cities, Brookshire and Pisaro stepped into the editing room and began the process of layering their respective recordings, cutting between the footage of Highland Park and Valencia. At any given moment there are up to 4 layers of simultaneous video and up to 8 layers of simultaneous sound recording. The multiple exposures highlight changes in light and surface sound while maintaining the sense of duration, and a continuation of time. Musicians Guthrie and Streb have created a live score that will be performed at REDCAT with the layers of sound and video that are projected.


Transparent Cities is preceded by the world premiere of Five Lines, a new film/music composition by Madison Brookshire. A close up of five, hand-drawn lines on graph paper transforms as a spot of sunlight moves over them, turning the lines into a musical staff and the screen into a subtly shifting musical score. Five Lines will be played by seven musicians—Ezra Buchla, April Guthrie, Julia Holter, Michael Pisaro, Cassia Streb, Christine Tavolocci and Tashi Wada—who will interpret the time-based score, with the simple instruction to "play in any tuning."



TICKETS & VENUE INFORMATION



Transparent Cities

Tuesday, May 1 at 8:30 pm

Tickets: $20 general ($16 students)



Seating is general admission and tickets are available for purchase in person at REDCAT Box Office, by phone at 213-237-2800, or online at www.redcat.org.



REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater

631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012



REDCAT is located at the corner of W. 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles.