Blindscape
by Scanner (UK) & TeZ (IT)

Robin opens his eyes as wide as he usually opens his ears! Yet another collaboration by Scanner who’s still threading where no man has set foot before.

Blindscape is an audio-visual environmental performance, which uses enhanced echo location sounds of bats flying over cities and landscapes to explore a movement through the urban sprawl and the imagination.

Visually the project mirrors and maps the sound by detecting the amplitude on two channels, which then animates vector shapes combined with an archive of imagery across the twin screens.

For contemporary audiovisual artists however, the possibilities of exploring this phenomenon have expanded with the advent of recent technologies and software that translate all electronic media, whether sounds or moving images, into the zeros and ones of computer code, easily manipulated, manufactured, copied, translated and transformed.

It is in this field of exploration that Scanner and TeZ have found a place to experiment, choosing to loosely reflect and invoke a blurring of the senses and celebrate the inherently ephemeral nature of these connections. The meaning and presence of these crossed lines of communication are always in flux; they represent a fleeting perceptual moment; a snapshot of what is possible within the context and hence the value of live performance. This project encourages the viewer to reflect on the process of experiencing art in a multi-dimensional, multi-sensory way. The negotiation of this is a constant process, a succession of ephemeral moments.

Dispatching and directing, negative and positive, Scanner and TeZ produce a live dialogue where two independent mediums liquefy into one work within the live arena. Scanner's work charts a narrative of seductive conversation, musical fragments and city soundscapes, archival recordings of bats, folded around a pulse, whilst TeZ's images colour and paint the environment in a reflective and imaginative manner.

Scanner - British artist, Robin Rimbaud - creates absorbing, multi-layered soundscapes that twist technology in unconventional ways. From his early controversial work using found mobile phone conversations, through to his focus on trawling the hidden noise of the modern metropolis as the symbol of the place where hidden meanings and missed contacts emerge, his restless explorations of the experimental terrain have won him international admiration from amongst others, Bjork and Stockhausen. Scanner is committed to working with cutting edge practitioners and has collaborated with artists from every imaginable genre: musicians Bryan Ferry and Laurie Anderson, The Royal Ballet and Random Dance companies, composers Michael Nyman and Luc Ferrari, and artists Mike Kelley and Derek Jarman. As well as producing compositions and audio CDs, his diverse body of work includes soundtracks for films, performances, radio, and site-specific intermedia installations. He has performed and created works in many of the world’s most prestigious spaces including SFMOMA USA, Hayward Gallery London, Pompidou Centre Paris, Corcoran Gallery DC, Tate Modern London and the Royal Opera House London.

TeZ, Italian multimedia artist, Maurizio Martinucci, living in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) since January 2002. In 1995 he established the multimedia research laboratory SUb in Rome involved in audio-visual experimentations with digital media for interactive applications and artworks. He has always been interested in using technology as a means for exploring languages, in particular the relationships between sound and images. In 1990 he attended a school for Computer Music Programmers with many of Italy's most reknown specialists in electronic music. He participated in workshops at the "Centro di Sonologia Computazionale" of the University of Padova, and at the "Tempo Reale" institute in Florence directed by Luciano Berio. Since the late eightes TeZ has been composing electronic music. He released several records with various projects (M.S.B., DoseZero, Nukleus, TeZ). His live-electronics performances have always included visual support realized with different original digital techniques. The TRIVID software, released by TeZ in its first version in August 2000, integrates most of the techniques and the creative experiences he has acquired over the past years. His work is now focusing on generative compositions and various experimental audiovisual projects, including Generative Live Cinema, the PriMiTif sessions, FilmWare, video-scenographies and sound installations. A remarkable acknowledgment to his work has been provided by The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) that, in January 2004, funded the extended research on his project “NG# PROTOQUADRO” for generative digital painting. In 2005 AFK also supported the quadrophonic sound performance "Waterscape" by VILLALOGICASONORA~ (TeZ + Wim Jongedijk). Tez's most recent works include collaborations with sound artists Scanner, Kim Cascone and Taylor Deupree.

• – Scanner's website
• – Tez's website