Seminar Dock Of The Bay
“Music as a constructor of images”
Thursday 11th January 2018 / Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola / 16:30 - 20:00 h.
This seminar, organised by the Dock of the Bay Festival in cooperation with the Gipuzkoa provincial authority's department of culture, the Elías Querejeta Film School, the University of the Basque Country and Fomento de San Sebastián offers a meeting point based on the most plural methodological reflection to approach the nature of the audiovisual text taken by the music as a starting point to construct images.
When discussing audiovisuals one often talks about a "sound deficit", but this is generally little explored in criticism, studio plans, analysis of films or research work. What we seek to do this year is to turn this approach on its head to approach specific texts that place music and sound work at the centre of their discourse. Readings of musical audiovisual texts of all kinds are sought: videoclips, music documentaries, sound performances, transmedia experiments and so on… all of them taking sound as their narrative and compositional thread around which the images are ordered and placed.
In fact, contemporary film has long stopped using the word "videoclip" as a kind of insult to denote fast montages or dramatic use of a sequence of scenes. On the contrary, with the creation of moments as stimulating as Wise up by Aimee Mann in Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999), the dramatic frivolity of Everytime by Britney Spears in Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012), the playing with montage in the films of Xavier Dolan or the brutal exploration of the duel based on Nick Cave's last 3D piece in One More Time With Feeling (Andrew Dominik, 2016), we believe it is fair to say that the relationship between image - in its most complex philosophical dimension - and music is creating a fascinating narrative terrain.
On the basis of bringing together different thinkers and critics from different contexts, the aim is to reflect on the way in which this new image canon is being created using specific examples, applied analyses and a direct approach, making use of the widest possible variety of methodology and approaches, making this a seminar focused on textual analysis.
To register send an email to info@dockofthebay.es (places limited).
16:30 h.
Lines of Escape (and meeting). Art, film and music
Fernando Golvano (More info)
An extensive modern history shows how a diverse, numerous constellation of creative artists have shifted the conventional frontiers between the visual arts and film in all their forms. In this way this experimental adventure, which has had the virtue of renewing forms of expression and their respective languages, also expands into creative sound. All this has altered the way we perceive, exhibit and manage art, to the point where arts centres, festivals of different kinds and other platforms compete with cinemas to show this cutting-edge format of creative documentary.
17:00 h.
Blu Da Ba Dee. Dissolve Xavier Dolan
Shaila García (More info)
Xavier Dolan's voice as an author deals with deliberately forgotten nineties radio formulas. In relaunching them he calls on a generation and at the same time opens fire on those who dub him pretentious because of his youth. In this Canadian's work music gives life to bodies that had been moribund, it is a crossroads of languages, a mix tape inherited from a father, the time in which a few lovers are failed.
17:45 h.
Random: Or how to fall in love with your musical instrument
Álvaro Granda (More info)
Can a person fall in love with their musical instrument? Can we forge a sentimental link with our instrument as if it were a person? Álvaro explains how he started collecting analogue instruments, but how he has a real sentimental link with one above all, his modular synthesiser. How an instrument's power to constantly surprise helps you reach certain metal states, even fall in love and learn to treat it not as an instrument but as something more. He also collaborated with his music on the last Greenpeace campaign of action.
18:30 h.
Sophisticated sounds in 21st century comedy
Desirée de Fez (More info)
The aim of this talk is to describe (and illustrate with examples) the sophisticated use of the soundtrack in contemporary comedy – more experimental, more ground-breaking, more underground – intended for television and internet. The search for new formulas to turn music and sound into comedy resources, and above all this being taken on board by a new generation of creators of the tunes, sounds and sound defects of the 21st century, will be among the issues discussed.
19:00 h.
Cachitos: musical archaeology for the masses
Jero Rodríguez (More info)
At “Cachitos” we don't listen to music - we see it. In viewing, sounds reach us through our eyes, notes through the choreography of Ballet Zoom, rhythm through Valerio's chromes and harmony through Aplauso’s wonderful playbacks. Taking the finest ingredients from the musical archive, we look for the invisible thread linking songs. Sequencing is the pampered queen of songs, whatever the style and vintage. It isn't easy, but sometimes we get it just right. We'll give you some examples in this session.
