Shuffling
2024

Read "RKM Interviews Dan Senn"
for Kiev (see sample video) Use headphones.
4K Video and Stereo Sound by Dan Senn

Duration 6:15

Shuffling for Kiev” (2024) was made from two found objects: the video track from a green lidded glass jar filled with coins, keys, paper clips, airplane toothpaste, etc. and then an empty Czech beer can. Both objects were treated as instruments for improvisational—the camera like a percussion mallet gesturally, rhythmically map the rotating jar contents; the aluminum can likewise but with my bare hands. The two performances were edited independently to create "standalone" works (Hear the sound track "Plechovka Piva" alone) that were about the same duration, this by chance, within a video editor. Also, by chance, the jar’s contents, unfiddled with, included two packs of stickies banded together that belateldy reminded me of the Ukrainian flagthus the titling here. The sound work, performed from an empty beer, still contained some dribblings of stale




 

  beer that wetted the small table while recording, this having an unexpected effect. The bearing of the two objects, one internally complex and ever shifting, the other externally complex with an internal varient, were compatible serendipitously.

There is no purposeful, symbolic relationship between jar with its cracked lid, it’s contents and the leaky beer can. And yet I would not combine the two unless I observed they worked well together toward realizing an unknown composite artifact. Once the decision to combine them, and the video improv preceded the audio performance, the works were merge in a way I’ve described in
"RKM Interviews Dan Senn".
DS 083024.




Dan Senn (Prague-Watertown) is an intermedia 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. Dan's work moves freely between expressive extremes and languages depending upon 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).

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