Aagoo Rec., dvd, 2011, ACO026
The symbiosis between a video artist and a musician can lead to unexpectedly effective synergies when both of them take on a shared territory to investigate. This is what happened to Luis Felipe Ortega and Israel Martinez who have produced intriguing audio-visual art about what they define as “the sculpted character of the landscape.” Their joint multi-sensorial explorations have some peculiar traits. In fact, the relationship between sound and image is a real dialogue here, made through a conscious (both synchronous and asynchronous) use of the language of time. Time is very carefully tuned in both the kinesis of the moving pictures and the dispersed rhythms of the sounds, both developing in progress. In Triptych the slowness and the quietness are sometimes perfectly intertwined, inducing a pleasant reaction even in other senses. The forms, in fact, sometimes assume a virtual “tactile” characteristic, and the silence can become “tasty”, thanks to the beautiful pictures. The physical territory, then, becomes a specific space portrayed in a new perspective: it’s abstracted while maintaining its very specific physical qualities. The authors are entering the space of the tourist with the eyes of the traveller. The crucial difference between the two approaches results in the author’s visual and aural rendering of the space. It’s a space constantly in transit, where the sudden change of environment marks the change of space, and the traveller is aware of that, making every space simultaneously a new space and his own space.