Rhizoma

rhizoma is an transdisciplinary project of Elias Durnez (guitar), Arto Van Roey (guitar) and Anton Lambert (double bass) in collaboration with video artist Achiel de Vlerk.

Together they explore how acoustic instruments, live electronics and video can interact with each other through improvisation, in real time. The project sprouted from a shared desire to explore the combination of acoustic instruments and live electronics and the blending of both sound worlds. During past collaborations we searched for new sound pallets to extend the sonic possibilities on our instruments and distilled a language out of it for improvising together. The motive for this project stems from a desire to create a transdisciplinary installation-performance which challenges us to rethink and rediscover our musical approaches in our improvisations. We believe both for our individual practices as well as for this project specifically, the improvised character is essential to allow ourselves to discover new forms of musical interaction, with the video as an extra and equal part of the journey. Does the dynamic between the music and the video arise from improvisation? Or does the video function as a score to the music? Does the dialogue between the two media foster a substantial interaction, where the distinction between the leading element and the responding element disappears? Secondly, we want to investigate which kind of narratives can emerge from this dynamic between video and music. For example, we’d like to explore different relations where the music is not merely inferior to or a substitute for the video’s narrative. We are interested in modes of interaction where the narrative of the video becomes more opaque, precisely because of the intervention of the music.

• https://www.hetbos.be/magazine/rhizoma