Machination 84

If Viking Eggeling had been able to redo his well-known film entitled "Symphonie Diagonale" in high definition and 16:9 format 85 years after it premiered, the result might look something like Machination 84: This work shows a densifying forest of wavy lines flickering (at first) in a vertical direction and stylized billows of smoke that partially cover and complicate each other to the rhythm of the evocative music. The images were created in realtime while the music was being performed, and not manipulated in postproduction: This is a film without a cut, a continuous flow of abstract mutations, a kind of digital copperplate engraving. The fragile visual texture, which is at first gray, white and black, soon blazes in pastel hues that gradually become more intense, while the synthetic soundtrack by @C - a delicate web of throbbing, clicking and ringing - creates an increasingly ominous soundscape.

The intrigue inscribed into this production´s title can only refer to the game of illusions that makes use of depth of focus and the (implied) figures. Individual "flames" seem to move into the foreground, close to the viewer´s eyes, and Machination 84 progresses from detailed drawing to smoldering fire. In its second half, the color scheme starts to resemble hellfire, in hot yellow and red, and then the lines slant to the left until they are horizontal, as if blown down in some imaginary storm. At the film´s end they run like paint - with a final surrealistic punch line: Toxic-yellow and blood-red trails, tangible like in action painting, move upward across the screen´s canvas.

(Stefan Grissemann)


Vertical, wavy lines in constant correlation with a passionate pounding and clicking of sound fragments by @c. The staggering and intertwining of lines, the choreography of flowing in simple black and white soon blazes in hues of yellow and red. Softly, like gone with the gentle wind, the moving lattice settles horizontally. The video, made in real-time to the music, ends in softened streams of colors like leaking oil paint. Visual poetry.

(Diagonale Catalog, 2011)