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Surfing on Sine Waves
“In the night of Brahma, Nature is inert and cannot dance till Shiva wills it. He rises from his rapture and – dancing – sends through inert matter pulsing waves of awakening sound, and lo! matter also dances, appearing as a glory around him. Dancing, he sustains its manifold phenomena. In the fullness of time, still dancing, he destroys all forms and names by fire and gives new rest. This is poetry; but none the less, science” – Ananda Coomeraswamy.
An Anecdote
In August 1992 I arrived in Copenhagen to start my studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Despite the hospitality of my hosts, and the excitement of getting to know the country, I experienced the difficulties faced by every immigrant – when one’s language, cultural references and practical knowledge, suddenly become obsolete.
During my second month there, I visited the Danish National Museum, where I saw Scandinavian rock art for the first time. The experience struck me like a bolt of lightning.
I had for a long time been interested in Southern African rock art through the incredible work of David Lewis-Williams. An important take-away from his various books, was his connecting certain archaic graphic designs or glyphs to entoptic phenomena.
As a long-time sufferer of Tinnitus, I appreciate how even the sober human body self-generates visual and auditory phenomena. 1
What struck me, that autumn day in Copenhagen, were the similarities between the pictographs of the seemingly diverse Southern African and Scandinavian cultures.
It was a revelation to appreciate the true universality of archaic glyphs and patterns; and to realise that the one thing all humanity shared, was the same nervous and sensory system which inspired them.
From my very first experiments with generating and modulating sound waves using analogue synthesisers; and creating video feedback; I instinctively felt that these processes tapped into the same, self-generating, “live-wire” of the human sensory and nervous system.
Both the video and audio components of L21ST are improvisations – created in one take without edits or revisions. Improvising in this way, is almost like being at the threshold – the fountainhead – of the Cosmic matrix – taking part in Shiva’s dance.
Video Feedback
For the catalogue to AIDS: The Exhibition 2 in 1992, I had made a photocopy work called The Anarchists.
Basically I had, using a photocopier, enlarged a photo of some anarchist squatters. In its turn, the resulting photocopy was then enlarged again, and again, until – after many generations of “zooming in” – the sheet was either pure black or pure white.
This is essentially the same looping, scaling algorithm seen in video or audio feedback 3.
One can experience this process In daily life when stepping into an elevator – or room – with mirrors on opposing walls – where you find yourself in an endless loop of reflections – in this case, getting smaller and smaller.
In most video feedback, each image is an enlargement of its predecessor – and at 25 frames per second, the resulting visual surge is often like a headlong rush into the whiteout/blackout void of chaos.
In fact, fractal-like images, familiar from the study of chaos theory, spontaneously appear. There is even a moment reminiscent of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This is unsurprising since most natural processes are based on recurring or feedback algorithms. Timelapse recordings of clouds – for example – can look remarkably similar.
And just like like any ‘overheated’ or chaotic system, total annihilation of the status quo could set in at any moment.
In his book Chaos, James Gleick describes a waterwheel, turning slowly in a steady flow of water. As the water-flow increases, the wheel spins faster and faster and faster until, at an unpredictable moment, the wheel suddenly starts turning against the rush of water.
Similarly, if left to continue uninfluenced, the visual surge of video feedback could either stop, blackout, or whiteout at any moment.
In the case of L21st, I was actively ‘steering’ (by panning and tilting) the camera through the feedback vortices – surfing on the cusp of chaos.
L21ST isn’t a “pure” feedback recording. In addition to me adding simple in-camera graphic overlays – like the “Swiss cheese holes” – the camera output went through a video mixer before going to the monitor. This meant that I could spontaneously change the colour and add simple effects – like mosaic blocks – to the image. In addition, I could combine two differently-processed channels of the stream using simply picture-in-picture or dissolve transitions. This visual electronic flux was recorded straight onto tape.
Sound Wave Generators & Oscillators
Two weeks after recording the visuals, my old Yamaha CS-30 analogue synthesiser arrived from Johannesburg.
While the principles of sound wave generation and modulation are relatively simple, the variables determining aspects of a sound soon add up – creating incredibly complex systems. Systems so complex in fact, that a seemingly insignificant change to a minor variable could lead to unpredictable, catastrophic changes in the overall sound. The famous butterfly flapping its wings in Bejing analogy from chaos theory becomes incredibly tangible.
This makes twiddling knobs on an analogue synthesiser a very ‘fragile’ affair.
Having unpacked the synth, I switched it on, and to my amazement, it was emitting a low, throbbing sound. I instinctively started recording the output, and started carefully twiddling the knobs. What followed can only be described as sonic surfing… riding the generators, oscillators and filters as far as the waves would take me – praying that I don’t get engulfed by noise – or silence.
In this dance of lucid awareness and spontaneous expression, I found the bodily resonance I had sensed that day – months before, on seeing the stone-age pictographs in Copenhagen.
One Last Thing
For those wondering about the title of this video.
L21ST is the title track of Cabaret Voltaire’s 1985 album – The Covenant, The Sword & The Arm Of The Lord
I cannot overstate the importance that bands like Cabaret Voltaire had in inspiring me to start experimenting with film and video.
An enormous amount of my creative output has references to music tracks. I will write more about that at some point.
Konrad Welz 2004 – expanded and revised in 2025
Footnotes
1: In his book – Silence – John Cage describes his becoming aware of this while visiting an anechoic chamber. He realised that we – as humans – can never hear complete silence, because the sounds produced by our functioning bodies – heartbeat, blood-flow, breathing, nervous system etc. – will always be audible. For me, this is similar to the ‘hum’ produced by any electrical machine which is switched on.
In all my video recordings, I love that fact that – in addition to recording the external sounds around it – the camera also records the sounds of its own functioning – its own existence. Not to mention the inevitable grainy noise or visual artefacts added to the images it records due to the physical nature of its sensor and the recording process.
On a deeper level, I view this as resonating with, or an analogy to, the Cosmos as a self-generating matrix – like Shiva’s dance mentioned above… or like the Tao or ch’i.
This is one of the prime reasons I love to watch and record this Becoming and Flow all around us – ourselves included. Return
2: Curated by Kendell Geers. Return
3: For those who haven’t tried it, video feedback is generated by connecting a video camera to a screen and then pointing the camera at the screen. Likewise, the piercing howls and screeches of audio feedback are caused by a microphone connected to a speaker and bringing them close together – the microphone sends the sounds it picks up to the speaker which then sends those sounds back to the microphone – just like the mythical Ouroboros snake swallowing its tail. Return
Post Script
If you enjoy this video, I can recommend similar videos based on feedback techniques or soundtracks generated in a similar way:
Electro Nosebleed Length: 2:54
Bhumisparsa Length: 1:16
Chromacandy Length: 3:23
