Clive Holden & Jan Jelinek: Seascape (diptych)

Watch a preview (excerpt) for an A/V-installation by Clive Holden (Canada) & Jan Jelinek (Germany), working title: Seascape (diptych). The artists’ limitations were to work independently, while trading files back-and-forth across the Atlantic, and to solely use found material from John Huston’s Moby Dick.

Clive Holden & Jan Jelinek: Seascape (diptych), 2021 (b/w film still)

The channels refer to each other in an open structure. Algorithmic chance procedures continuously refresh the relationship between sight and sound, which are coordinated so the illusion of a common synchronicity is created. The synthesis of a forced mirage is completed by the viewer participant. The audio composition was solely sourced from the voice/monologues of the movie’s main character, Captain Ahab, a classic ‘deranged hero’ who aurally hypnotizes his crew. His voice controls a synthesizer system via its amplitude and frequency. The visual composition of found footage loops focusses on the rhythmic and cyclical gestures of Huston’s swimming whales, drowning men, and waiting women. A technique of sliding layers was created to dynamically re-frame these animate shapes. A grid of thin black lines outlines the translucent, stained glass aesthetic found in the film’s roiling seas.