Voice is a Drone

Audiovisual project

Audiovisual project Voice is a Drone is a combination of electronic hum (drone) and three-dimensional projection mapping within set boundaries, presented by two artists – composer Mykolas Natalevičius and video artist Rimas Sakalauskas. Three years ago the two have collaborated in creating post-industrial video piece Synchronisation, which vigorously migrated international festivals and garnered numerous international awards, whereas this time they present an event-spectacle at the Pocket Hall of the Arts Printing House – a project comprising 3D effects specially adapted to the hall’s interior, video projections of sewer streams and drainage substances and the droning of pipelines, achieved by transforming the human voice beyond recognition.

The artists whose collaboration began in 2009 have created an audiovisual project Synchronisation, inspired by post-soviet and post-industrial imagination; it was soon selected as the best student work and won the Silver Crane prize at the Lithuanian film industry awards. The piece immediately became the centre of attention of the international art community: over 70 different exhibitions and festivals (from Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn to New York, Brazil and Seoul) featured it in their programmes and over a dozen have awarded the Synchronisation the first prizes. Inspired by the success of the first joint project, Rimas Sakalauskas and Mykolas Natalevičius decided to present their second work Voice is a Drone, which might be regarded as a pilot experiment for the future project RE: industrialisation.

The reference point of the project organized by independent creative group Operomanija is the human voice, its sonic “molecules” that merge, agglomerate, modulate and turn into a drone, an accumulating static load. Compositional manipulations by Mykolas Natalevičius transform the voice into an urban buzz, a humming of empty chambers of infrastructure mechanisms or open industrial areas, or into something, that the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze would call the “sound-of-any-space”, the enthusiasts of experimental electronic music would name it drone music, whereas the artists themselves – drone of the pipe. Captivated by visions evoked by industrial drone, video artist Rimas Sakalauskas has created unique visual expression. His video projections mark the imaginary diagrams of sewer flows, hydraulic currents, heterogeneous substance moving along the pipeline: from fresh water to excrements, along with different shapes of mixing thereof. On the other hand, one of the main objectives of the artist in this project was to try out the fresh technique of 3D mapping, which he first encountered while working together with Gluk Media team, authors of the projection Magic Christmas, specially adapted for the side façade of the Vilnius Archcathedral. This time, Rimas Sakalauskas adapted 3D effects to the interior of the Pocket Hall of the Arts Printing House.

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