of mirrors and electronic music...

last night, for the first time in about 10 years or so, watched tarkovsky's mirror. of course, there were hundreds of images, light, and movement that were stunning (a favorite was the scene with the bird pictured above); but there was one incredible moment of stasis where an extremely quiet sound - either a field recording or piece of electronic composition - is hovering in the background, and slowly becomes a focus - even though its presence is always "beneath". it was so beautiful and powerful that i forget now what the visual was. it sent me to the bookshelves wondering if tarkovsky wrote much about sound or music...

i found this in a longer, section on film, sound, and music in tarkovsky's 1987 "sculpting in time" published by knopf:

"electronic music seems to me to have enormously rich possibilities for cinema. artemiev and i used it in some scenes in mirror... we wanted the sound to be close to that of an earthly echo, filled with poetic suggestion - to rustling, to sighing. the notes had to convey the fact that reality is conditional, and at the same time accurately to reproduce states of mind, the sounds of a person's interior world. the moment we hear what it is, and realize that it's being constructed, electronic music dies... electronic music has exactly that capacity for being absorbed into the sound. it can be hidden behind bigger noises and remain indistinct; like the voice of nature... it can be like somebody breathing."

a tree of aluminum...

from the danish design magazine mobilia, a 1970 one page article on the swiss pavilion at expo '70 in japan with nice small grainy images...

"switzerland: a tree of aluminum in front of a finely-detailed, precisely formed exhibition hall. the 32,000 lamps on the branches were turned on in 10 stages. cooled air flowed in waves from the tree, making the plaza a very popular place to rest - electronic music was projected downwards from the tree - when the lamps were lit the music changed to another program and broadcast outwards from the loudspeakers at the treetop. design willi walter."

of course, one can't help but see connections between the photos of folks resting beneath this tree of lights and olafur eliasson's weather project done at the tate a few years ago. i'm much more interested in what the electronic music sounded like!