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As early as 1977, the artist Rudolf Polanszky began formal experiments and theoretical deliberations involving the later "musical monkey?. The central element of all discussions within the video and photo series "The Musical Monkey I-III? is that of reconstruction. In the case of "The Musical Monkey I?, this means reconstruction through analogue structures.
Using a Super8 camera, Polanszky films the respective expression of his face in correspondence with a series of varying tones, which he produces with his voice. For each tone he uses the corresponding film cadre; the microphone remains switched off.
The arrangement of prints of this multitude of images creates for Polanszky a system for the visual representation of his sounds and simultaneously forms the basis for his further experimental process: In the next step, the artist processes the portraits by dividing his filmed face into two halves and arranging them so that the halves reflect one another, The double portraits resulting from each individual image are very different, but are nonetheless two images of one tone: visual stereo?
"I am the musical monkey?? states Rudolf Polanszky in a discussion with Benedikt Ledebur, and thus refers to the reflection of his own existence in his works. Polanszky is initially the performer of his work, and simultaneously the artist who then positions the resulting image of the performer within a system, in order to then radically dismantle the foundation of the system, and thus the organisation of the individual images. Instead of an equivalent [Tone x = Image x-x], there are now two dimensions [Tone x = Image x2-x2], while at the same time an imaginary reset switch is being used:
With the recomposition, Polanszky is not interested in creating new models of musical combinatorics, meaning to produce new music, but rather in recoding the images and in the referential application of the code within a second organisation.
The double portraits are analysed for similarities with Polanszky's first organizational system. The artist then creates the tone corresponding to the image. The individual films, which are recorded without sound, are then in a sense retroactively dubbed with these audio recordings.
Polanszky here applies models of understanding the theory of evolution to his art. "For me art is a field of understanding? (Rudolf Polanszky) However, this also means that the application of this reconstruction method, which Polanszky introduces with the concept of ad hoc synthesis, is a serious attempt to peel sounds from out of their network of meanings, to cut away all redundancies in order to be able to develop new relationships and experiences. The corresponding sounds taken from an arbitrary composition of sound images are reconstructed according to the principle of similarity. Polanszky calls these new constructed experiences resulting from the perception of these films expansions of the elementary basis.
(Suess) |
