VISUAL DISORDERS IS A TWISTED BLEND OF VIDEO COLLAGE, ANIMATION AND MACRO DOCUMENTATION COMPILED AS AN ACCOMPANIMENT TO THE RELUCTANT CARNIVORE RELEASE ‘CULT OF SYNTHETIC ORDER’.
CULT OF SYNTHETIC ORDER/VISUAL DISORDERS TAKES YOU ON A SLOW AND DARK MEDITATIVE JOURNEY THROUGH AN ABSTRACT POLITICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL NARRATIVE.
Cult of Synthetic Orderstarted in January 2020 initially as an audio project with the view to stitching together a series of unused or archived electronics based soundscapes and experiments into one long format composition. As the project progressed I began to implement the same concept used for the audio with collected footage, stills, unfinished edits of video clips and a modified version of a previous project with Andrew W Ping titled +- now titled Glacial Pace (Amendment). As work on the two mediums progressed, narratives started to form for each track/chapter that held (if slightly abstracted) political and environmental underpinnings.
At this point in time, large parts of the east coast of Australia were being decimated by unprecedented bush fires, Liberal leadership(?) alongside aligned political parties and media outlets championed the coal industry whilst continuing to denigrate those who voicedconcern for the foreseeable world climate crisis, high ranking members of the Catholic church in Australia were under investigation via a royal commission or appealing criminal convictions over roles played in the cover-up of child sexual abuse, Mr MAGA continued to baffle the world with unintelligible ramblings of greatness whilst fueling social divide. It was these events that started to shape (not forcibly but organically) the collage of video elements that make up Visual Disorders.
RELEASE FORMATS
As the visual element found form, the composition felt as if it needed some extra layers. I contacted my friends Guy Fleming (an avid pianist and pipe organ player) andSage Pbbbt(an amazing experimental vocalist) asking them if they would like to contribute to the project. Both were asked to improvise with the existing aural textures of the composition and were open for me to then arrange these recordings into the piece.
PACKAGING DESIGN
All the elements were coming together with the exception of a section that contained a reworking of a short video piece that had been entered into a competition years prior. Every other part had context and an underlying narrative but this section failed to speak out.That was untilthe concern for a new virus infiltratingparts of theworldescalated into a global pandemic. The organic textures of the existing piece coupled with new additional footage revealed the final piece to my abstract visual puzzle.
Demo packaging and design.
With the addition of protest footage supplied by my friend and activist filmmaker Zebedee Parkes to the chapter Reticence or Resist, the audio/video elements were then refined resulting in what I see as an abstract political, environmental horror that encourages contemplation and meditation on the darkness engulfingtheplanet in the year 2020.
PRODUCTION STILLS
Production Stills
Early texture concepts for production.
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Guy Fleming has a life-long interest in playing pipe organ and piano music, spanning from Baroque through to 20th century genres. He also has a strong interest in experimental or electroacoustic forms of music, such as musique concrete, electronic synthesis and music works written for film.
Sage Pbbbt's practice takes inspiration from Tuvan and Mongolian overtone singing, Inuit throat singing, sound poetry and an ongoing exploration of extra-normal vocal technique. Additional Influences also include industrial music, trance, and drone; insight meditation practice, urban/industrial shamanism and chaos magick; feminist, queer and trans praxis; and Discordianism.
Zebedee Parkes is an activist/journalist/filmmaker who is passionate about social justice. He expresses his passion for political activism through film, photographs and words. Zebedee is an award winning documentary maker earning accolades for his 2015 documentary 'For My Friends in Detention'.
Andrew W Ping is an enthusiastic photographer/videographer whose passion began with Super 8 and film cameras that later shiftedto an interest in production with digital formats. Andrew has experience in various roles on a number of Western Australian film productions. He is a Murdoch University graduate with a Bachelor of Film Production and Photography.