25.04.2015

19 – 02 h
Night of the Museums

 

For The Night of the Museums, artist Zin Taylor (1978, Canada) will transform Portikus into an all-encompassing composition of video, sound and music. At regular intervals, the video Lichen Voices / Stripes and Dots will alternate with the sound performance The Story of Stripes and Dots (Chapter 4). Throughout the remainder of the evening, Taylor will play selections from his record collection, focusing on music that possesses a particular psychedelic language. The music will be accompanied by a video projection – enacting a sort of choreography for the music and lending an overall visual setting for the soundtrack of the night.
To accompany the evening, Städelschule’s IMBISS is mixing a delicious menu of tropical tacos and subtropical cocktails.

In his talk "A conversation on Lichen Voices" on Thursday, April 23 at 7pm in the Städelschule’s Aula, Zin Taylor will speak about the work on view for The Night of the Museums.

More on the works:

Lichen Voices / Stripes and Dots is a narrative video where lichen, a growth existing upon the surface of rocks, uses the characters of a stripe and dot to make visual the thoughts it has been thinking. This hallucinogenic proposition introduces the transference, and subsequent translation, of information from one form into another. The stripe and the dot, two analog building blocks of visual language, are seen giving form to the stories held within the ancient lichen organism.

The Story of Stripes and Dots (Chapter 4) is a radio-play imagining the translation of sound into form. A voice introduces a dot, and with the aid of an analog synthesizer, expands its characteristics into a series of stripes: the sign-wave of sound as an undulating stripe, led by the thoughts of an adventurous dot. Over the course of several minutes the characteristics of the stripe and the dot are developed and made audible as their movements describe different scenarios with sound.

Following the presentation of the video and audio works A Story of Sound + Visuals (a small index of contemporary psych) will unfold over the remaining hours of the evening. Taylor will play selections from his record collection of groups and individuals who seek to develop a language of psychedelia through the music they compose. Typically downtempo and contemplative, the collection presents a place where many of the ideas and observations employed within Lichen Voices / Stripes and Dots and The Story of Stripes and Dots (Chapter 4) were developed. The music will be accompanied by projected footage of two people dressed as a stripe and a dot cavorting on a moon-ish landscape.