Danny Lavie - "With Determination and Sensitivity"

Danny Lavie uses the megaphone as a musical instrument, and plays music that evokes a sense of mounting tension. The range of disturbances and noises drowns out the low whistling sound and charges the tense atmosphere with apocalyptic innuendos. The disquieting and monotonous noise creates a sense of tense alertness, and destabilizes the ability to distinguish between reality and illusion. It is unclear whether the sound hints at what is taking place, foretells what is to come, or calls up past memories -- and within this uncertainty there is also a gnawing sense of doubt concerning our powers of judgment and our ability to distinguish between an internal voice and external noise.
In his composition, Lavie burns the wind. He expands upon the instructions received by security forces in advance of the disengagement, to treat the settlers "with determination and sensitivity," and projects it onto the environment and onto nature -- the arena from which he took a sample of the sound of wind. The tension that builds up as one listens to this wailing wind accumulates and creates a mounting anticipation of a climactic moment that fails to materialize. The megaphone hanging on the wall broadcasts fragments of sound that echo the wind and witness what is taking place, and which will forever keep echoing. Like reflected light burned into photographic film or onto a digital memory chip, which then passes on to the retina and to the viewer's consciousness, so the wailing wind is burned into the digital chip from which the soundtrack is transmitted to the eardrum and to the listener's consciousness -- with determination and sensitivity.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• alternative
• electronic