synchresis 1.2

screened @ olsen leeds 2006, installed @ startrunning manchester 2008

video clip

synchresis is a term invented by the film theorist michel chion meaning

the forging between something one sees and something one hears - it is the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when these occur at exactly the same time. Synchresis is an acronym formed by telescoping together the two words synchronism and synthesis. (taken from filmsound.org)

I have developed a way of treating the duration sound and image together - so a clip can be frozen, slowed down indefinitely, speeded up, looped or edited in real time - and the original pitch relationships of the sounds captured will remain intact. For example when you slow an image down it doesn't suddenly change colour, however, this is what traditionally happens to sound. The software I've built enables the duration of sound and image to be changed in real time: an event can be frozen at a given frame, and the sound on that frame will be frozen in the same way as the image.

Although this might sound like a merely technical process, what happens with footage of activity, movement, talking, doing etc, is that subtle inner moments are revealed: one can focus on the minute detail in everyday activity and engage with it in very intimate way. Moments of extreme fragility or brutality emerge where you least expect to find them, and action takes on a new emphasis: the mechanical becomes contemplative, the dynamic slows to stasis, the chaotic becomes hyper focussed, and vice verse.

© mark fell, modified June 07, 2008, at 04:50 AM PDT edit print