Last Wednesday saw music and art collide for a one-of-a-kind Art Matters event at La Sala Rossa. Six bands took the stage throughout the night, and their tunes guided the video projection of still-art images that patterned the musicians’ skin and instruments.
“The idea of video projection with music has been done before, for sure,” said the event’s curator, first-year Concordia film student and local musician Derek Branscombe. “I think the difference is that […] all the visuals you see are things that Concordia students have made.” He pointed out that all of the bands had at least one member who was also a Concordia student. “All the clips are being triggered live, in time with the music,” he continued. “I think this is really cool because [they’re] really good original visuals that have never been seen before, [made] by Concordia students, re-mixed live and responding to the music.”
While the Art Matters festival is geared toward celebrating visual art produced by Concordia students, Branscombe proposed doing something a bit different as a way of combining his two main interests: music and film.
“Mine is the only one that’s really a concert, so it’s a bit different from the general Art Matters type of exhibit,” he said.
Kicking off the night was the ambient electro-acoustic sounds of Fuck Fish, a solo artist who also plays in Wilderling, with the visual accompaniment provided by Perry Flannigan. Next up was local psychedelic group Omaha, who jammed amongst the abstract brushstrokes of Matias Graham. The Commission, a live-beats hip-hop quartet made up of Concordia music students, was to follow, and artist Damaris Baker coloured their socially-conscious rhymes.
Branscombe’s own band, Wilderling, married the works of Graham and Baker for their indie-pop set, while techno-house duo Sibian & Faun guided the visual projections of Emma Owen. Headlining the event was trio Pop Winds, who mixed undecipherable noise with dreamy saxophone, haunting keyboards and echoey vocals to create an experimental, electronic vibe. For their set, Pop Winds lead the audience through a visual summary of the night’s four contributing artists – resulting in a multi-medium, artistically collaborative mosaic.
With such a wide variety of musical genres infused into the event, Brandscombe explained that he chose “basically just who I thought would lend well to the videos.”
Although, according to Branscombe, the event was meant to be equally about the music as it was about the visual art, he thinks that, “[…] it’s turned out just how it’s naturally evolved – to being dictated more by the music.”
Comments are closed.