SEASCAPE - polyptych (installation) by Clive Holden (visuals) and Jan Jelinek (audio), (2 monitors - size 50" minimum - portrait format, 1 Mac mini (II) incl. software/app by Clive Holden, 2 monitor speakers and stands, stereo output), 2024.

Alte Feuerwache, Berlin 2024, photo by Jan Jelinek

SEASCAPE - polyptych by Clive Holden & Jan Jelinek is a hybrid form of generative art. The app/software generates itself live, the cinematic montage is in flux, video and audio files are being algorithmically selected. It's original analog media, the 1956 movie Moby Dick by John Huston has here been dissolved into digital code that Jan Jelinek and Clive Holden have reconstituted into an audio-visual work. 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. 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.

Alte Feuerwache, Berlin 2024, photo by Jan Jelinek

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 (more information about Jan Jelinek's sountrack / supplementary album release here).
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.

Alte Feuerwache, Berlin 2024, photo by Jan Jelinek