Danger   2023 by Dan Senn	Alley 4K Video with Stereo Sound (See sample video) Duration = 10:14    -> Read "RKM Interviews Dan Senn"
Danger Alley (2023) was filmed on March 29, 2023 in Prague and is of the underside of a sports stadium seating area, an area consisting of 50 old, wooden, defaced double doors backing onto rhw alley-like street named U městských domů. The site is in Holeševice, a few blocks from The DOX Center for Cobtemporary Art and Senn's Gasworks Studio where the video was edited and sound generated. The title was derived from Caroline Senn's reluctance to walk through this "scary" half-alley at night. Danger Alley has direct links to the artist's "percussive" videos of the 1990s. The soundtrack is also linked to his electronic music of the 1970s while at the University of Illinois-Urbana and then in Chicago in 1978-1979, his Jefferson Street Studio where the early Roulette Intermedium concerts were presented. The sound was generated and performed using a Korg MS-20 clone (Behringer K-2). All of Dan's 1990s "percussive" videos, made in Tacoma, Washington, were mappings of objects, terraine, structures, etc. Danger Alley rhythmically maps these wooden double doors, moving left to right in a visual narrative, an image sequence imporant and intact throughout. Dan's percussive videos from the 1990s were in-camera edited, this having an unique improvisational, visual-to-aural rhythmic link. This work, with technology far in advance of 1992, is still informed by the original shootings that were often shot from the shoulder to enable flexibilty, camera rotation and speed—the camera movement accepted as long as the image was stationary. Danger Alley was shot 20 years after leaving Tacoma from a Sony 4K camera mounted on a shaky, cheap tripod, impacted by wind, passers by, the police, the artist's age... to create a sequence of moving stills that, by chance and choice, align nicely with a sound track from a retro synth improvised in a way not unlike his 1990s videos.The two mediums are thus closely integrated/knit together. * Listen with headphones or a large sound system. Otherwise it is not Senn's piece.	Rhythmically, in some sense, this is a three track work with two mediums sounding. The silent video track was shot (performed) first and then trimmed to produce an intial work of nearly 15 minutes. The analog sounds from the K-2 were then improvised with the edited video just within eye sight. A second track was then improvised with the first just within earshot, the video not playing. These tracks were then processed in Ableton Live without changes to the order of the events... (a form of in-camera-like sound editing) and then combined with the video using a "drawing-up" method in both mediums to enhance simultanaities, a new-old feature in this work and numerous others to follow in the next year. The brilliance of 4K video, already stunning at 2k, is breathtaking. As a photogragher for many years before embracing video in 1992, an experiential path also taken by my colleague Phill Niblock, the attraction to video in the 1990s was that it had become accessible ($). These days, the 720x480 resolutions of HI8 is primative, but even in the 1990s, it was possible to double and tripled the resolution by using multiple monitors in rotation side-by-side where possible. The integration of the film and sound is so established in this work established—the silent and sounded images acting in a well-considered dance of mediums. The shaky camera movement in the related 1990s work is necessary, desirable and intended. The out-of-synch-ness, at times, is desirable. The chance simultaneities, intended, albeit paradoxically. The precise connections, contrived but far less than you may think. The transitory unlinking of the video and sound, like the simultaneities, planned. The entire process was integrated, rule-based and utterly informed by the work of Cage, Niblock and from a time when in-camera editing forced a consciousness/deliberateness of image, image stability, movement, memory, visual-aural narrative, chance and "planned" simultaneities combined blatantly within the moment. DS 113023	Dan Senn (Prague-Watertown) is an intermedia/fluxus artist working in music composition and production, kinetic sound sculpture, experimental and documentary film. He has been a professor of music and art in the United States and Australia and travels internationally as a lecturer, performer and installation artist. He lives in Prague where he directs the Echofluxx festivals, and Watertown, Wisconsin, the USA, with his partner-collaborator, composer, organist, pianist and fabric artist Caroline Senn. Dan's work moves freely between expressive extremes and languages depending on the aesthetic joust at hand. Dan is cofounder of Roulette Intermedium in New York City, Cascadia Composers of Portland Oregon, and the Echofluxx media festivals in Prague. (read more). Note: Following this work a series of videos with sound were made in quick succession including Banana Telegraph, and U Garáží.