24/08/2007
Imax
London
Thick pink, purple and green light-lines pulsate and writhe around the mammoth screen before the audience, keeping rhythm with some industrial house beat. A possessed tribe of neon serpents, snaking their way to en-jaw us? Some bunch of optical fibres, seething with crucial messages about the Apocalypse? Or just so many lasers, marking out oblique meanings along their unpredictable course…
Right on time the voice of an internal tormentor arrives to chastise: ‘Stop just sitting there in confusion! Surely you can extract some deep meaning from this audiovisual artefact, you vacant heretic?’
Soon enough the screen blacks-out to accommodate a particularly expressive white square. This cube throbs and rattles along to the accelerating beat with quasi-human responsiveness, passion almost, and you’re still left sitting there puzzling over what in the world of leftfield wonders it is trying to tell you. Just as you’re on the brink of epiphany, the square retires to usher in a lively crew of coloured zig-zags, the music relaxes its tempo, and the audience is propelled into another alternative mental position.
‘Yeah, people have commented a lot about that square. We wanted something spiky in the middle, so that it wasn’t too serene all of the way through,’ Lemonjelly’s Fred Deakin tells me after the show. ‘IOTA’ (‘Inventions Of The Abstract’) is their offering for this year’s Optronica festival at the mighty London IMAX. Was this the hugest screen the pair has ever turned into a freewheeling audiovisual spectacle? ‘Absolutely! We made ‘IOTA’ with this screen in mind. Unlike music videos or with film soundtracks, we made the music just as we received segments of the visuals from our artists – it was an integrated project.’
Integrated this work may be, and as suitable as ‘spiky’ is to describe that insistent little assault on my spirit and my sanity, Deakin is going to have to throw me more of a bone before I march straight up to the next square I see and violently extract a more satisfying explanation. ‘Well, we wanted to work with the most abstract elements but make them as animated as we possibly could. The Japanese are the best at that – twisting the rules of character without actually breaking them.’
‘Abstract’ was Lemonjelly’s watchword, rendering any cerebral efforts on the behalf of the audience completely out of place.
Deakin continues: ‘I think that what we did was for people who have experienced a club environment. The aim really was just to get you to feel something.’ Fear, bewilderment, empathy, elation; any feeling would have done. It seems that my (over)reaction wasn’t too far off the mark. Not so with one disgruntled Guardian critic, for whom ‘The unkind thought… occurred to me that I was sitting in a noisy nightclub watching the world’s biggest screen saver.’
‘You have a go then!’ is Deakin’s ready answer to combat the inevitable sceptics, referencing Disney’s ‘Fantasia,’ Pink Floyd’s unforgettable light shows and the challenging Op Art of the 60s and 70s as the (pop) cultural signposts such
audiovisual initiatives have reflected and taken off from. As for the development of this burgeoning sub culture, Deakin enthuses about the different types of technology arriving ‘daily’ to assist an audiovisual revolution. Citing Pioneer’s DVD turntables – ‘They’re excellent, you can treat DVDs just like vinyl! – and looking forward to ‘animated and digitalised music packaging’ reversing the threat to album artwork thanks to MP3s, Deakin also promises me that soon there will be ‘a strong audiovisual community, putting out as much of their work as musicians do on myspace.’
Ditch those 3D shades (Calvin Harris, are you listening?) and stamp out the last sparks of life in your glow sticks (for the love of progress, Klaxons, please instruct your disciples accordingly). Stand by for your eyes to be widened and your brain
to be addled by audiovisual works just like these. After all, who needs chemicals when you’ve got gregarious geometry and emotionally intelligent light-lines to orchestrate your raving steps? With Lemonjelly leading the way – Deakin’s passion and the duo’s flair indicate their dominance on the scene – there’s sure to be some treats in store.
As an older member of the audience sitting behind me comically said, ‘Well, it’s not rock n roll is it?’ Curiosities like ‘IOTA’ are specifically built to rip you right out of your remit and excite an emotion to make you feel alive again. Wake up!
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