Semiconductor at Project Lodge
semiconductorfilms.com
Semiconductor makes magnetic fields trippy, but still scientific.
Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, the UK-based pair who make experimental video and music together as Semiconductor, conjure up a visceral weave between the visual, natural, and aural worlds. They used to manipulate their audio and 3-D animation in live performances, so it was a little underwhelming Monday night to find out they'd come all the way to the Project Lodge to pop in a DVD and answer a few questions. Luckily, Jarman and Gerhardt's works can make landscapes pulse up and down with seismic activity, or use noise to evoke the texture of the sun's surface. It makes even the trickiest areas of science feel immediate and tactile.
In one scene of "The Sound Of Microclimates," the camera looks upon a Paris office building, which is surrounded with an electronic hum and a swarm of colorful, manipulated particles. It's one of several Semiconductor films that keeps the cool head and steady gaze of a rational observer. But that didn't stop a guy with face tattoos named Bud from proclaiming it "psychedelic." The one loud fellow in a reserved crowd of about 30, he also called out "That was awesome!" a few times, once right in the middle of a piece.
In "Magnetic Movie," one of several films the pair made while "[hanging] out with the scientists for six months" at a space-sciences lab at UC-Berkeley, magnetic fields stretch and crackle throughout the scientists' workspaces, crudely visualized in bundles of red, yellow, blue, and white lines. "Do You Think Science..." takes the experimentation down a notch. It's just a series of shots in which the scientists react to a question from Harman and Gerhardt: Do you think science can understand everything?
On the other extreme, "Brilliant Noise" filled up the Project Lodge's little screen with the surface of the sun. This fiery, black-and-white sea leaps up with solar flares and dips into stunning whirlpools. A static whoosh of noise rises, falls, reverberates, and illuminates with its ferocious and graceful agitations. After the screening, the two held a quick discussion with the audience, coming off a lot more humble and quiet than their actual works. Gerhardt explained: "We've done the same performance too many times and we just thought it'd be easier to go around and show the films." And less than an hour of them, at that. They probably have it in them to kick a little more ass, but the show made for a fascinatingly textured adventure anyway.
