Omega Block Cycles

‘Omega Block Cycles’ originates from an experiment conducted through the night of the hottest day recorded to date in England. On this night, an acoustic feedback system of microphones and loudspeakers was arranged in a resonant space in York University. Synthesizer material was injected into this system, allowing it to evolve through a negotiation between the performer and the acoustic space, resulting in blooms of harmonics, shifting spectral density and contorted melodies. This material is recontextualised in each performance through a combination of the original recordings and new live feedback systems using digital acoustic emulations and processes that both recreate and expand upon the sonic environment created at its origin.

 

The visual element of ‘Omega Block Cycles’ was filmed using a 50 year old cinema lens that was adapted to prioritise the capture of ‘undesirable’ aspects of filmmaking such as abstraction and softness. With the addition of new glass planes, the lens could focus within its own body, capturing the material behavior of light within the lens barrel. Through this process of abstraction, the means of image production are highlighted, with the camera capturing the behavior of light as it responds to reflective and refractive surfaces. Small points of light evolve, gathering and losing focus, enlarging, disappearing and mutating while conjuring symbolic solar bodies.