Liminal
1996-1999
2019 HD 1080P Digital Restoration.
Original: Digital Video/BetaSP, Colour, Stereo. Duration: 28 mins.
Original: Digital Video/BetaSP, Colour, Stereo. Duration: 28 mins.
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The Flower Tango
1999 Digital video, 3D Computer Animation. Duration: 4:25 The Flower Tango was inspired by J.K. Huysmans' classic `decadent' text `À Rebours' (1884). The libretto concerns itself with a variety of exotic and unusual plants that are described in terms of their similarity to diseases of the body, effectively inverting the standard appreciation of flowers as `beautiful' objects. Taking this lead the visual materials employ computer animations of flower-like forms that unfold during the course of the song - themselves a parody of the `natural.' In this way a kind of commentary on the alien-ness of nature is explored, set in counterpoint with the fictive realism of computer-generated imagery. Both become forms of the monstrous. |
This piece is based on two distinct ideas: first is the tango rhythm, which is based on a cyclic chord progression with a bel canto melody over the top; the second is a five-part motet that alternates with the tango and is in the style of Carlo Gesulaldo (1560-1613). The tango acts as a refrain with little development, unlike the motet which becomes more removed from tonality with each entry. The barely tonal sections, chromaticism and false harmonic relations of the motet comment on the bizarre and singular genius of Gesualdo as well as a distorted perception of nature and the `natural.' |
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The Numbers Song
1998 Digital video, 3D Computer Animation. Duration: 4:14 The Numbers Song outlines the protagonist's relationship with the world of mathematics. The text is deliberately hyperbolic and performed in a melodramatic manner, in a kind of darkly humorous allusion to the roles of Vincent Price. There are various references to the Metaphysical poets and the doctrines of Neoplatonism, ironised as a kind of jazz ballad. The later French text is a mnemonic for the number Pi (if you count the letters in the words they equate with the sequence 3.1415926...) Computer animations are employed to display various types of platonic objects undergoing morphing and deformations applied in the abstract mathematical space of the computer. |
The numbers song is as much about numbers as it is about the often insipid lyrics of jazz songs. Could you imagine Frank Sinatra singing about the philosophy of mathematics? In this respect the initial sequence of the song ironises conventional jazz singing prior to moving into a darker dodecaphony. The French mnemonic for the number Pi in this second serial part acted as a basis for constructing some of the tone rows. This segues into a harmonically free section that accompanies the spoken text. |
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Ozymandias
1998 Digital video, 3D Computer Animation. Duration: 2:46 Percy Bysshe Shelley's classic poem (1818) is used in the video in relation to romantic and Neoclassical architecture, with particular reference to Boullée and Speer, as a kind of critique of the ideology of power articulated by these architectures. The poem `Ozymandias' is a vivid portrayal of the vanity of demagoguery and monumentalism, explored here as a trope for the moral ambiguities of these unbuilt architectures, that stand as fascinating historical symbols of the folly of certain types of power, albeit from varying political persuasions. The strong counterpoint of the `modernity' of the score with the inflated Neoclassicism of the architecures is an attempt to dramatise the counterpoint of these different aesthetics, both of which have struggled for power in this last century. Ironically, these buildings will ever be as virtual as they are here: fictions of history re-imagined via computer simulation. |
Ozymandias is mostly based on the enigmatic minor and the enigmatic major scales. These are rather unusual and obscure scales not generally associated with Western music. In the more polyrhythmic and densely orchestrated sections the inversions of both these scales are used. In some sections notes from the enigmatic scales act as pedal points (tonal centres). From these pedal points are used their associated harmonic series and their inversions to generate a palindromic type of effect. These techniques were largely employed as formal compositional methodologies and may not be obviously audible in the music. |
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The Mount
1998 Digital video, 3D Computer Animation. Duration: 5:43 The text is inspired by Heinrich von Kleist, Clemens Brentano and Ludwig Achim's `Verschiedene Empfindungen vor einer Seelandschaft von Friedrich, worauf ein Kapuziner' (published in the Berliner Abendblätter, 13 October 1810), and the poetry of Rilke. It is a set of meditations upon the role of the Rückenfigur (reversed figure/turned-away figure) in Caspar David Friedrich's work (specifically the Capuchin monk gazing over the sea in Friedrich's `Monk am Meer'(1809) in this instance) and the notion of depersonalisation as effected by viewing such works and/or the sublime in nature. The paintings of Friedrich were filmed in the original at Schloß Charlottenburg (Berlin) and the Hermitage (St. Petersburg). The visuals include several shots taken at the very places where Friedrich painted (e.g. on the island of Rügen on the Baltic coast), as well as footage shot in Tasmania's mountainous South-West region. The idea behind this was to draw attention to the similarity of much Northern Romantic painting and nineteenth-century views of the Australian landscape. Reconstructing these types of images within a video medium demanded an authenticity of source material, recuperating the historical facts of these ways of looking at landscape and the various tropes of romantic vision that they embody. |
The idea behind `The Mount' was to emulate the sense of romantic yearning so prevalent in nineteenth-century music. Although, late in the twentieth century, certain aspects of romanticism have been treated with irony or distain, this piece attempts to recuperate some of these sentiments without becoming mired in cliché. The form is ternary and the harmony, tempo and melodic content is all quite slow moving. For instance, the harmony is very slow to move away from the tonic key, so as to create a sense of expectation. The harmonic extensions and suspensions also give a sense of delayed resolution and anticipation. In these respects the music contains references to Wagner, Mahler and, more contemporarily, Gorecki. |
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BodySong
1997 Digital video, 3D Computer Animation. Duration: 3:52 The BodySong uses a kind of incantatory/lecture form of text utilising medical terminology concerned with the horizon of bodily interiority (the unseen inside). This treats the body as a kind of tube through which the nomenclature wanders, territorialising the body into zones of disembodied light (the Eye) and corporeal-but-sanitised filth (the excrementality of the digestive tract). This is in counterpoint to the `extrospective' texts concerned with what might be termed `external horizonality' (e.g. The Mount, with its specific references to romantic landscape painting and its Burkean notions of the Sublime). The visuals present a kind of medical lecture in which the orator is eventually subsumed within and excreted from the interior of the corpus being illustrated. |
The BodySong is comprised of two very different entities: Gregorian chant and images of the body. Writing in a style that is usually associated with God and Purity and using a text that deals with excretions creates a kind of critical tension, where the nature of both forms of text is almost subverted by the other. The opening of the piece starts with two alternating chords, with the voice ascending through these chords with the appropriate scales. This then segues into a rather humorous A.M.E.B. (Australian Music Examination Board) melody. The manner in which the text is chanted is based on recitation tones (which are a formal derivative of Western sacred music). As a consequence the rhythm of the text was left to the singer. However each recitation tone functions as a tonic and often modulates to an augmented fourth above or below this. The augmented fourth is not usually associated with sacred music because of its traditionally demonic associations. |
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Andromeda
1996 Digital video, 3D Computer Animation. Duration: 2:18 `Andromeda' is a nineteenth century text by the poet Robert Browning (1812-1889), an extract from `Pauline' (1833). Browning was noted for an obscure and personal iconography. The visuals counterpoise the text (one very much in the romantic mould) with a computer-modelled cemetery based on the Cimitero di Staglieno in Genoa, one of the finest examples of European Nineteenth-Century Neoclassical funerary architecture. Situated within this are various images from tombs in the actual cemetery (e.g. `Faith' by Santo Varni (1807-1885)) and images from some cemeteries in St. Petersburg. These are used to explore the Nineteenth-Century association of female allegorical statuary with the iconography and erotics of death, recomposed within the simulated cemetery (with its overtones of computer-game imagery) and some visual references to the films of Ken Russell. This type of iconographic mélange attempts to delineate some of the liminality of death and the ambivalence of its representations. |
The Liminal title music and Andromeda are both based on baroque-type chord progressions. The idea here was to write rich and dark music that was primarily contrapuntal in nature. These techniques were used to elicit the brooding and introspective nature of the accompanying visuals and romantic texts. |
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Credits
Produced and Directed by Peter Morse Libretto and Lyrics by Peter Morse 3D Computer Animation by Peter Morse Cinematography by Peter Morse Audio production by Alistair Dudfield and Peter Morse |
Music Composed and Performed by Glenn Rogers Baritone: Andrew Foote Sopranos: Penelope Reynolds, Samantha Podeú Made with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission. |