Sound and Vision #5
Welcome to Sound and Vision, a newsletter devoted to Audiovisual Art in Web3. Issue #5, featuring Ex Mortal.
I’d like to feature just one artist for this issue: Ex Mortal. I first came across his work via the artist & curator Sky Goodman (they collaborated on a piece for ONBD’s drop on objkt.com “Sound and Vision Vol. 1”). He uses Modular synths, Drum machines, Video Synths and Analog VHS processing — basically it’s a lot of analog hardware, manipulated without the use of computers to create music and visuals.
Long before EDM was embraced by the outdoor festival masses, there was IDM, short for ‘Intelligent Dance Music’. In the late 90s and early 2000s we listened to IDM artists like Autechre, Aphex Twin, Amon Tobin, Boards of Canada and Squarepusher in small clubs in Brooklyn NY, all of whom paired glorious synth soundscapes with alternately abrasive and ambient beats. For musicians, it was like giving your brain an auditory workout. Ex Mortal, whether he knows it or not (he probably does), comes from this school of music. And to this musical tradition he’s added ‘Video Synths’, whatever those are. He actually lists them, so I know they must be real. This is one of his recent creations:
Artwork Description:
_10.5 minute ambient thing.
_ Recorded on 12/20/22 , to a single stereo track. Computerless hardware synthesizer music.
_ Synths : KORG MS2000, ROLAND SRV 3030, NOVATAION PEAK, KORG SQ-64, MALEKKO VARIGATE-8, MUSIC THING RADIO MUSIC, ROLAND SPACE ECHO RE-201, KNOBULA CINEMATIC, BLUE LANTERN SPACEMOTH V3, 1010 BITBOX.
_Recorded in a single pass, to a single track, no edits were made:)
_Looping gif created from a long video synth session. Video synths used :
_ syntonie.htp CBV 001,CHROMA CAULDRON MAINBOW, melted electronics strangeloop.
I love the performative aspect of this piece — recorded in a single pass, just twisting knobs, real-time, with crazy sounding equipment from an alternate history. Here’s one more piece, slightly more ambient:
Artwork Description:
a quiet storm of synths. Four minutes of ambience. Stereo visuals made at different periods within the past year. all hardware__________________original music written 07/29/22 by ex_mortal.
The dual screen effect really works well here - the one on the left is more glitchy and angular, the one on the right more serene and ambient. Still, the two visuals seem to be connected, and watching while listening to the evolving synth track helps to ‘trick’ my brain into seeing the color fields flowing from one side to the other. I think scale would be interesting here - I want to see this projected onto a huge wall with a big sound system.
I always try and end these articles with an update on the latest works by the artist, and this will be no exception - but I’m going to allow myself to veer off from ‘strictly’ audiovisual art here, because I love this new series by Ex Mortal: Weird Fishes , on Foundation. “ANDROIDS ELECTRIC GOLDFISH” is set to be shown with Superchief at Fox Gallery in Tokyo! Maybe Ex Mortal will add some sound to the fishes as he continues the series :)
And that’s a wrap, thank you for continuing this journey with me!
Author Bio:
