DVD-ROM/DVD-Video/DVD-Audio, 2003, Wergo Edition ZKM WER 20595; available from Schott Musik International, Weihergarten 5, D-55116 Mainz, Germany; telephone (+49) 6131-246-0; fax (+49) 6131-246-211; Web www.schott-music.com/shop/3/1000083/1660295/show,137067.html.

Reviewed by Jim Hearon
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

This multimedia DVD comes in three flavors: DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, and DVD-Audio—all on the same disc. The DVD-ROM portion contains audio tracks that can be used to reconstruct an eight-channel concert version of the audio composition Inferno der Stile, while the DVD-Audio portion is used to hear five titles at the 24-bit dynamic range and higher sample rates afforded by some universal players. The DVD-Video portion features two pieces for video and audio, as well as three additional audio-only selections.

The two collaborations for audio and video, Lizard Point and ->Thrill <-/Le temps s’ouvre,are well matched in terms of video and audio gestures. The predominant black, white, and blue colors of Silke Braemer’s video works very well combined with Ludger Brümmer’s often metallic-sounding computer music. The music was created using the Genesis software developed by the Association pour la Création et la Recherche sur les Outils d’Expression (ACROE), Grenoble, France, and maintains a clarity of timbre while including irrationality of rhythms utilized with sustained sounds of fixed rates of recurrence layered on top of one another. These audio processes compliment almost every aspect of the video. The music is an amiable match for the video in that it never loses focus in the marriage of motion, computer animation, and choreography. The video has a strong filmic quality due to the incorporation of performers Jennifer Blose, Matthias Hartmann, and Nancy Woo as dancers/actors with choreography by Claudia Lichtblau. The computer animation of original graphic imagery includes copious use of overlays or composting, motion effects, and color manipulation, but the pacing and cutting never become tiresome or predictable. The combination of music and video is skillful and produces an overall abstract result and can best be enjoyed simply as good art.

->Thrill <-,and the video by Silke Braemer, Le temps s’ouvre, give a more surrealistic impression in their aspects of choreographic illusion and musique concrète as natural phenomena raised to the level of something new and synthetically very pleasing. The performers Sun-Ju Kim and Magali Sander-Fett, choreographed, filmed, and animated, again provide filmic aspects to the video which was a completely independent project from the audio. Ms. Braemer’s video dwells more on animation and effects this time, and explores energy processes in an exciting manner. The music, also created using the ACROE Genesis software, includes virtual objects set into vibration to produce concrete sounds and their time and pitch manipulation to produce complex textures. The audio’s physical nature compliments the energy exploration of the video very well and produces a unique juxtaposition which fuses the two media into a solid, unified presentation.

This release by Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) and Wergo is Edition ZKM 9 (WER 20595) in a series of Wergo issues. Mr. Brümmer’s music is heard on several of the Wergo discs, but on this particular release he is the featured audio artist. The disc’s insert booklet contains a nice forward by Johannes Goebel, series director, outlining the possible uses of the multimedia disk. The series began originally on CD, ZKM 1 (WER 20512), with Mr. Goebel’s Après les Grand Tours and Mr. Brümmer’s Ambre and Lilac.

The DVD-ROM portion of the disc includes the original eight tracks of AIFF audio for Inferno der Stile, an audio composition conceived for octophonic sound, if one is willing to recreate the original loudspeaker setup. A diagram for the speaker placement/distribution is listed in the disc’s insert booklet along with a link to the composer’s Web site. 

The DVD-Video portion of the disc contains three additional audio-only selections. Inferno der Stile (2000) is presented as five-channel encoded audio, intended to be representative of the original eight-channel source. Phrenos (1997) was written with the help of Common Lisp Music software developed by William Schottstaedt at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University, and was awarded the Grand Prix, Pierre d’Or, as best work in all categories at the 1997 Bourges Festival. The third piece, de la nuit (1999), was composed for a concert in the underground water tanks at Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg and is sonically very interesting.