Living Sound in Silent Light

Overview

It's a flickering, cool and intimate feeling. Although you know the music is live with you there in the room, you can't take your eyes of the silent movie actors who seem to own any sound that accompanies them. It's surprising how many events are coming up which combine silent films with live sound. Curiousworks' March Twist is doing it, and Edwin Montgomery is scoring something similar the week after. But probably the strangest of all of them is Living Sound in Silent Light — a night of film at the Red Rattler mixing old films and new, where the evening's only rule is that any sound needs to be done live on the night.

Headliners Nichol, Russel and Lenz are re-scoring the classic Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, but other acts are taking a stranger approach to stranger films. The skeleton-powered Surgical Sideshow will collaborate with some projected pictures, and Transient Atmospheric Phenomena plan to play to Dog Days — a short shot around Sydney on a custom-rigged infrared camera, and instrumented with a short-wave radio, 44-gallon drum and cello. LC Beats intends to beat-box to an animated short of his own, and Ibis Nixon will start the evening with an Alfred Hitchcock silent short.