The Dickson Experimental Sound Film is a film made by William Dickson in late 1894 or early 1895. It is the first known film with live-recorded sound and appears to be the first example of a motion picture made for the Kinetophone, the proto-sound-film system developed by Dickson and Thomas Edison. (The Kinetophone—consisting of a Kinetoscope accompanied by a cylinder-playing phonograph—was not a true sound-film system as no attempt was made to synchronize image and audio throughout playback.) The film was produced at the "Black Maria," Edison's New Jersey film studio. There is no evidence that it was ever exhibited in its original format. Newly digitized and restored, it is the only surviving Kinetophone film.
The movie features Dickson playing a violin into a recording cone for an off-camera wax cylinder.[1] The melody is from a barcarolle, "Song of the Cabin Boy," from Les Cloches de Corneville (literally The Bells of Corneville; presented in English-speaking countries as The Chimes of Normandy), a light opera composed by Robert Planquette in 1877.[2] In front of Dickson, two men dance to the music. In the final seconds, a fourth man briefly crosses from left to right behind the cone. The running time of the restored film is seventeen seconds; the accompanying cylinder contains approximately two minutes of sound, including twenty-three seconds of violin music, encompassing the film's soundtrack. After its restoration in 2000, the Dickson Experimental Sound Film was selected for inclusion in the United States National Film Registry.
Soundscapers extraordinaire Fumiko & Tim (ex-Barcelona, now London-based) take us on a ecology mindtrip while playing live in a London garden with Debbie the cat (named btw after Debbie the Monkey from the 60s series 'Lost in Space') on the prowl or groom. What is especially wonderful about ZZSM is that they utilize instruments cobbled together from recycled materials! Tim's banjo and guitar utilize old biscuit tins, Fumiko's microphone is an old telephone receiver, there's percussion using a common plastic clothes hanger, and their most amazing constructs are the two theremins (see below for more theremin info) which are housed in curious habitats - Fumiko's is a ceramic brain! It is a real sight to behold watching them wrap after a set - all their gear (which we reckon costs less than a knock-off 2nd user Gibson while their wall of sound betters big rock acts) fits neatly into a hand-carted shopping trolley! When they aren't making music, the super duo install minimalist art (Fumiko is in the process of organizing a Zen installion in a Finnish forest).
One of the great pleasures of making Experimental Conversations was being in a position to film artists and critics in the process of thinking. To observe someone truly thinking as they speak is a moving and rare enough privilege. This ability to experiment in a conversational situation is analogous to what experimental film and video artists do in their daily practice: to push forward without pre-conceived idea or prepared answers. At the polar opposite of Hollywood where everything is pre-programmed to ensure that the audience gets again exactly what it wanted last time, experimental filmmaking is inherently radical because it avoids pre-existent solutions, pre-established forms, pre-determined meanings. Just like thinking on your feet, experimenting with a medium involves delving into unlocatable but creative zones, drawing on other spaces, those that can’t be identified until you go there.
All this while never losing sight of the inroads made by your predecessors and peers. In this sense, the Conversations of the title would also be between art-works of different times and geographies. Again, at the other extreme to Hollywood, the ethics of the experimental filmmaker is easily observed, a simultaneous commitment to “a legacy your work is made in relation to” (Gerard Byrne) and to multiplying the possibilities for perception and sensation of life in its most rich and raw state, even if it means finding new roads of access to “the most archaic, primal, originary sensations” (Philippe Grandrieux). The only way to extend perception is for artists to explore every potentiality of the medium they work in, and the experimental filmmakers interviewed here (and their illustrious predecessors in the experimental tradition, some of whose work can be seen in the complementary programme of great short experimental films) display an extreme variety of approaches to this task: for example, the camera-less cinema of Stan Brakhage and Vincent Deville; the found-footage films of Peter Tscherkassky, Augustin Gimel, Artavazd Pelechian and Deville again; the apocalyptic poetry of Godard or Grandrieux; the specially prepared lenses and filters used by Sokurov, Patrick Bokanowski and Clare Langan; or those who turn narrative conventions on their head (Tex Avery, Grandrieux, Duras, F.J. Ossang, Vivienne Dick). One of the main goals of this documentary is to look closely at what Irish artists who work with the moving image are doing and how it compares with their peers across Europe.
It seems clear that the work is on a par with anything being created elsewhere and that the artists share similar concerns and problems (thinking more conceptually has meant thinking more globally). For example the question of performance and the filming of bodies has always been a preoccupation of experimental filmmakers and it’s notable that both Vivienne Dick (with Lydia Lunch and Pat Place) and F.J. Ossang (with Joe Strummer, seen here in a wonderful clip from Docteur Chance) have found in the rock ’n’ roll performer a way of bypassing the need for trained actors. Experimental Conversations then, cacophonous conversations or the art of forging connections and alliances across boundaries of all kinds: other spaces, other times.
