The Third Mind

Having a major festival of sound art obviously wasn't enough for Cryptic: they are back with their occasional invasion of the CCA, Cryptic Nights: this time, they've enlisted a composer and a visual artist,  Matthew Collings and Erik Parr, to have a crack at exploring algorithmic cinema through music, film. and live action.

Inevitably, I had to ask Collings what algorithmic cinema might be. "Imagine stepping into a cinema and seeing a film, you are presented with all these elements: scenes, music soundtrack, titles, individual shots, dialogue, et cetera," he explains.  "Only what you see is always going to be the same, that's the final cut - and there can be only one. But this is changing now with technology. Algorithmic cinema is cinema experienced through software, or an algorithm. "

In the wake of the Glasgow Film Festival, which celebrated films made by visual artists in the Entre Chien et Loup night out, new approaches to cinema are coming out of the celluloid closet. But Collings, however, says that the algorithmic cinema is closer to home. 

"When you watch the same movie on a DVD now you can select the individual scenes, watch the director's cut, see the out-takes, all thanks to a simple software program running from the DVD," he continues. "So we are already used to algorithmic cinema, although a very primitive form. With this project everything you see and hear is controlled dynamically by a special software system that we have built for the project."

The Third Mind has three performers: Collings, Christos Michalakos and Erik Parr, and is part interactive performance and part installation, "using sound and images to connect artists and audience through data exchange."

"We've tried to avoid having one aspect of the project direct it," Collings notes. "At times it makes sense for the music to lead or the visuals to lead, and depending on certain sections or approaches we end up working in a certain way. If the shoe fits..."

Yet for all the high technology, Collings sees the project very much in an old cinematic tradition. "Cinema was originally an extension from theater and vaudeville, which back then had improvisation and live musical performances," he says.  "Silent film showings often had live music. It was much more interactive in those days. So approaching this project in the digital medium has been a bridge, allowing us to regain that original vitality and unpredictability that was there in early and pre-cinema."


Performances: Wed 6 & Thu 7 March // 20:00 // £5 Installation: Thu 7 March // 12:00 – 18:00 // Free

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