Ghost – Loud + Strong

Quarter Deck

Sound recordings from a flexi disc dialogue about past life regression, and other assorted antique vinyl library sound effects, were reformatted as optical sound waveforms by recording into a 16mm sound camera, hand-processing the film, and contact printing the resulting waveforms into a composition for live performance.

Sounds surface and regress, male voices ‘authorise’ and female voices ‘characterise’, as an uncannily obscured field of light and dark unfolds on screen. Created by the texture of the sticky tape used to hold down the composition during printing, the flickering film frames surpass normal levels of visual intelligibility, compelling the viewer to hallucinate a non-existent visual subtext. Sound and light weave into a disorienting cacophony, intensified and punctuated by an antique laboratory strobe light and an anti-syncopating rotating shutter intervening before the projector’s light beam. Indicated in the repetition of the sound sample, ‘To find a memory in the vastness of time…’ Ghosts – Loud and Strong explores the experience of sensations that threaten to exceed our capacity to perceive or understand them.