The Light & Shadow Salon

THE QUIET NORTH*: Video Art from PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS** Art Festival in Papa Westray, Orkney Curated by IVANOV + CHAN

doors open at 7.30, screening begins at 8pm prompt

* THE QUIET NORTH – the title of the album by Norwegian noise artist Lasse Marhaug ** PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS – the name of the island “Papay”, “Gyro” and “Nights” can be translated as : The Full-Moon February Night of a Children-Eating Giantess on the Island of Secluded Monks, somewhere at the edge of the North Sea. Gyro also known as Gygr, Gryla, Grylur, Grøleks, or Skeklers in other Nordic countries’ folklore.

The Light & Shadow Salon is thrilled to invite you to encounter Papay Gyro Nights Festival for a one-night-only, deeply special encounter in London!

The Night of Gyros is an ancient festival of the island Papa Westray (Papay) in Orkney, which was abandoned, about 100 years ago, when exhausted men of the island came back home from WW1.

Since 2011 The Night of Gyros is back in the form of video and sound art, experimental film and music, architecture and performance events – taking over fields, rocks, old farm buildings, workshops and ruins. The Festival on the island goes on for eight days. The weather in February is stormy and not many people can travel for the festival, but once arrived – unable to escape.

The Island is a special place where impossible assemblages are created by a blend of isolation, routine of the seasons, local folklore and stories brought by shipwrecked sailors, strange objects washed on the shore. PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS’ art programme is constructing an assemblage, a map, an opera. Art works are related to the place, its rituals, traditions, history, textures and sounds – to the island as a whole; and also zooming into finest fragments, when stories told and a historical events are taking place – the grass is growing and we’d like to listen and to see it too. PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS is a search for an ideal language to tell the story of the island.

After PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS programme is “farmed” on the small island (where only 70 inhabitants and brave participants and visitors can see it) it travels. Last year it visited Bergen, Reykjavik, Belgrade, Faroe Islands and Hong Kong.

In London we’ll be presenting a video art selection from PAPAY GYRO NIGHTS 2013

ARTISTS:

Anders Weberg (SE) Bjarni Gunnarsson & Cédric Dupire (FR) Juha van Ingen (FI) Linda Quinlan (IE) Natalie Price-Hafslund (NO) Rikke Benborg (DK) Silje Linge Haaland (NO) Valentina Ferrandes (GE)

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50 YEARS OF VIDEO ART: STEINA & WOODY VASULKA Selection of works by the legendary pioneers of video art and founders of New York’s KITCHEN curated by Kirstin Sheving, co-curator Sigrún Harðardóttir . 700IS HREINDYRALAND (IS)

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LIVE PERFORMANCE / AUDIOVIASUALISATION by Ryo Ikeshiro (UK) CONSTRUCTION IN ZHUANGZI

Construction in Zhuangzi is a “live audiovisualisation” of a modified Lorenz dynamical system, well-known for the “butterfly effect”.

The same process produces both the sound and the moving image so what you see is what you hear or vice versa, without the one triggering the other as seen in most VJ performances and visualisations. Far from being a redundant doubling of data, research into auditory displays and perception show that synchronised audio and visuals are perceived as a combined audiovisual entity. In addition with the possibilities of cross-modal phenomena, they become more than the sum of its parts. This is also the basis of Chion’s theory of synchresis. This also allows for more complex processes to be experienced than merely audio or visuals alone, making experimental art more accessible without diluting the content.

The work runs on a custom-made program which is like an instrument or a machine that is unpredictable and chaotic. A performance consists of an attempt at understanding and controlling its mechanisms through an improvisation involving the modifications of its parameters. The audiovisuals which are generated in real-time act as the interface to the near-autonomous algorithm, clarifying the complex processes of the Lorenz and human interaction. A machinic or post-human sensibility is evoked through an appropriately digital noisy/glitch representation of emergent phenomena.

Ryo Ikeshiro is a London-based electronic and acoustic musician working in the fields of audiovisual composition, improvisation, interactive installations, soundtracks and theory. He is currently studying for a PhD in studio composition at Goldsmiths College. Research interests include the use of dynamical systems and fractals in generative, emergent structures and nonstandard synthesis, punk/noise/glitch aesthetics and new forms of interaction and presentation of works.

He has presented work at: Noise vs Culture, Kent; Xenakis. La musique électroacoustique, Université Paris 8; PureGold Launch, Southbank Centre; Deleuze Philosophy Transdisciplinarity, London; Redsonic, London; Seeing Sound 2, Bath; Xenakis International Symposium 2011, London; CONTEMPORANEA 2011 Festival di Nuova Musica, Udine; ICMC10, New York; re:new 2010, Copenhagen. He is a member of ry-om and Genosong. As an events organiser, he runs a series entitled ABA. He is also a visiting tutor and runs workshops challenging preconceptions about music.