Scott Morrison – Ballad(s) For Quiet Horizons

Scott Morrison

Room40, dvd
This is the first documentation of Scott Morrison’s live installation works in the form of a series of compelling audio/visual tracks. Most of them focus on grass set in motion by an inaudible wind. The enchanting single and collective movements are cut in a very precise and specific way: producing a visual depth that is also perfectly synced with the music. The viewer, in fact, is taken aurally by the hand,
seemingly forced to relate to the hypnotic images. The forms, although familiar, are elaborated with simple techniques that transforms their awareness, somehow enhancing their dynamics and details. Different shots in time of the same scene are juxtaposed with transparency, or a change of focus from the foreground to various depths, following different elements in a sort of “natural” progression, perceptible even when the cutting is fast. Surprisingly, the images always remain austere but the motion, and especially in its resilient quality, plays with our experience because of the lack of the relevant natural sounds. The visual oscillations are supported by artificial sound patterns and details of the Australian landscape start to resonate in our short term memory. The summa can be seen in the “And like stars it exploded” track: a small masterpiece with falling rain drops gradually abstracting visually and sonically, but maintaining their dropping rhythm in a way that preserves their essence through the definitive aesthetic changes.