Anticipations From A Near Future. Audio Foundation April/May 2024

Anticipations From A Near Future is a new exhibition by Tauranga based multi-disciplinary and recording artist Kyle Sattler. The exhibition features two new audio-visual works, Spheres Of Our Effective Action and Waves Colliding. Playing in unison, these works generate spontaneous sonic and visual compositions which reach across the exhibition spaces at the Audio Foundation constituting a single installation reflecting on notions of perception and the interaction of aural, visual, and temporal experience. Drawing from the writing of film theorist Michel Chion, Sattler’s works enable an exploration of synchresis – the perceptual fusion of concurrently occurring visual and sonic phenomena in film. As planetary orbs rotate across video monitors, the relationship between audible and the visual material is set against additional notions such as flow, intuition, and rhythmic anticipation.

‘Spheres of our effective action’, presents four monitor screens in combination. Two pairs pulsing out images of techno colourful rotating spheres accompanied by an infinitely asynchronous arrangement of ambient synth samples. The orb or spherical object represented is inspired by Henri Bergson’s, “sphere of our effective action”, a term he used to describe interaction with the real present. In this context the sphere can be viewed as symbolic of perceptual potentiality. Earth based time perception is set by the localised circadian system as this planet rotates around and moves with our near celestial star. However, even planets within our own solar system rotate at differing speeds and in different directions. This disparity with non-Earth planetary systems implies an uncertainty regarding the universality of time perception. Would sentient life evolved within those ‘other’ systems perceive an alternate delineation of ‘mechanised’ time? The raw single orb motif visually rotating across dual monitors set side by side in tight formation is also connotative of time that is arriving (anticipated) and time departing (remembered). Near future and near past manifest as a literal spheres of effective action. The intersection between the two monitors, the line where one forward rotating sphere joins with the other departing sphere, infers the real present, the moment of our effective action. For active human consciousness this is the psychological state of ‘action over reflective thought’ obtained when in Flow. When the orb/sphere is viewed from single point perspective it details a metaphorical perception horizon, the near future, juxtaposed against the recently forgotten. Here, the three dimensionality of the rotating sphere becomes suggestive of range within our immediate perceptual distance, alluding to moments beyond those of anticipation/memory. They are the duality of the yet foreseen and the since completed, forever passing through the now/currently.

‘Waves Colliding’ is a semi-generative two monitor video and sound installation exploring the interaction of dualities. Two opposing video sequences made from overlapping animated layers of laser cut cardboard waves grinding out an endless rippling colour field expanse. Within this configuration the two repeating entities (monitors) are in constant collision. Waves colliding in space.