Light Music

FILM

Light Music
Lis Rhodes, 1975, UK, 16mm, 25'

Light Music was motivated by the scant attention being paid to women composers in the European tradition. It began as a composition in drawings. In the filming of these drawings — it developed into an orchestration of noise — whereby the intervals between the lines register as differentiated noise or “notes”. The drawings were then filmed using a rostrum camera (a type of camera used to animate still images). The movement of the camera lens — towards or away from the drawings — is heard; as the intervals between lines narrow or widen, so the pitch of sound rises or falls. The image produces sound — that is, the playing of lines is literally “light” music. In the earliest film screenings of Light Music, it was not possible to synchronise the two projectors. And so I would move between the two — in a sense conducting them — trying to keep them in time. Cinema and music tend to demand that each performance be a repetition of the last. But Light Music is more or less different each time it is screened. In a particular context, the audience becomes performers — performing within and to the light of Light Music. This is taken away, perhaps — on a mobile phone — as a digital record of the viewer as performer. The relationship of the audience to the work has radically changed: sound is not still — sound moves. (Lis Rhodes)