Brilliant Noise, Fabrica, Brighton
by Jack Sargeant

Thus far Semiconductor's work has been drawn to localised anomalies: to Parisian microclimates, the geological landscape of Northumbria, and the choreography of migrating starlings over Brighton's ruined West Pier. These works locate and examine the endless flux of forces that play across the apparent calm of the everyday.

Magnetic Movie - exhibited at Brilliant Noise - consolidates Semiconductor's short films, depicting imaginary magnetic fields dancing across empty research labs at the Space Science Laboratory at Berkeley. Unlike previous work the soundtrack incorporates scientists discussing the theoretical physics that attempts to explain the behaviour of these fields alongside the fuzz and pop of electric dissonance.

In Do You Think Science…? a number of scientists attempt to answer the question. In some way this is pure documentary, but the subject is not science but the thought processes that inform scientific enquiry. What emerges from these simple talking heads interviews is not certitude but a series of aporia that expose the impossibility of totalising knowledge, as one scientist replies "do you understand love?"

In Brilliant Noise, Semiconductor turn their attention to solar forces.

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another" - Plato

Taking thousands of NASA satellite images, the artists have edited these pictures together to create a grainy animation of the Sun. The rigorous mediation of image selection and photographic manipulation undertaken by NASA is negated by Semiconductor, who engage not just with the subject matter but also with the mechanisms of reproduction that have dictated and framed the scientific documentation. The Sun is so dazzling that to gaze upon it renders the viewer blind, this inability to fully look upon the Sun is removed in carefully altered

images, but for Semiconductor the possibility and risk of non-sight becomes part of the creative process. Rather than clean-up the image for easy sterile consumption Semiconductor use the digital blur and fuzz of the spectacular satellite images as a way in which to create and manipulate the sound of the piece, radio static and sonic rumbles changing according to the intensity of the footage.

Brilliant Noise differs from Semiconductor's previous pieces with its emphasis on the chiaroscuro it is devoid of the colour palate that has come to define much of their work. Through this emphasis on the black and white nature of the video via the sound design, the piece draws attention to the forces that shape and reshape the Sun. The lack of colour also adds to the contradictory nature of the piece, which is both a documentary of the Sun's numerous cycles and simultaneously a series of abstracted visual shapes that display the immense cosmological forces that play through and around the Sun's apparent immutability, revealing instead an ocean of ever changing forms.

Presented as a video triptych the ensuing film and installation serves to create a vast Sunscape, as the surface of the Sun and the boiling solar atmosphere ebb and flow across the screen in ferocious arching patterns and ejaculations of luminescent fluid. The extolment of the Sun has been central across cultures, from the ancient father of the gods Helios to symbolic godhead, as the face of the heavens or the solar anus of dissonant surrealism. In choosing to present the piece as a triptych in a deconsecrated church Semiconductor inadvertently contextualise Brilliant Noise within the traditional of liturgical art. As audiences experience the piece it is becomes clear that there is a moment of immanence, of the sacred within the profane. But this is not a religious ecstasy so much as a brief moment of the sacred found in the understanding of the annihilation of the self in the face of the universe.

Like the chaotic elements that effect the urban landscape and wilderness, the Sun shapes our very existence, and like the forces of gravity and wind and bird flight it is largely ignored, a transparent phenomenon which commonplace renders invisible. Yet in searching for these hidden moments, in truly exploring the world - and now the Sun around which we orbit - the fragility and inconsequentiality of human existence can be truly understood.

Jack Sargeant, 2008-01-07
www.jacktext.net

Touring Exhibition Details:
In their solar archive film, Brilliant Noise Semiconductor worked with scientists to download hundreds of thousands of files. Bringing these together they reveal the suns finest unseen moments as a short film. Leaving in the flaws present in the image, something that NASA would normally clean up, they have embraced the imperfections as a way to reveal something about the tools man uses to capture these images and create something tangible to us.

Magnetic Movie is a short film which was inspired by their interviews conducted with the scientists. "During these interviews they would describe a science beyond our understanding and through our need to find some meaning we began to imagine our own interpretations of what was expressed to try and find a way to picture this world. Relying on the scientists' verbal descriptions and their visual simulations we have articulated our own response, visually representing magnetic fields as ever changing geometries within the setting of the space sciences lab."

Their work Do You Think Science… probes the very values of science it self. Through a series of interviews conducted by Semiconductor space scientists from the laboratory explore their view of the world, the universe and themselves.

"We're interested in our experience of the natural world and how things go unseen or unheard due to our limited perceptive capabilities or comparatively short lifespan. We often make use of the tools man has devised, to expose these things to us, putting them to work in our familiar environment to help us reflect on the worlds out of reach to us, whilst always keeping an aspect of the watching or listening human present"

Over the past ten years Semiconductor has produced a comprehensive body of moving image works. Although there is a consistency of theme, they approach each work from a fresh angle, always looking to extend themselves and to break new ground. Working with digital animation as a tool to transcend the constraints of time, scale and natural forces they promote ideas of the world beyond human experience, questioning our very existence.

In 2001 they broke the mould by releasing their art works on DVD, the first of its kind. They have followed this up by releasing a DVD catalogue to accompany the touring exhibition, Worlds in Flux; it includes work from the past five years and is released by Fat Cat Records. It also includes a re-mix project whereby Semiconductor has commissioned artists and musicians to create alternate soundtracks for Brilliant Noise.

Throughout the exhibition there will be additional events including artist's talks, space scientists presentations, live performance events and screenings.