The Mechanics of Dissonance (2017)
Medium: Two standard 16mm projectors on one screen with quadraphonic soundtrack (36mins)
By Luke Fowler and Richard McMaster
Commissioned by V_A_C Foundation for The Geometry Of Now festival (curated by Mark Fell)
Premier: Moscow February 2017.

The Mechanics of Dissonance is the first film collaboration by the duo Luke Fowler and Richard McMaster. A double projection with multi-channel sound, the work centers around a new composition for the Russian ANS synthesiser. Designed between 1937 and 1957 the ANS is one of the most mythical analogue electronic instruments of the 20th Century. The film was recorded on location at the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow, where the final surviving example is housed.

Drawing on Histologist and Neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s groundbreaking studies of the nervous system both as directions for a set of choreographed camera movements and as graphic signs which are then translated into pitch and amplitude information for the ANS’s 720 oscillators. The artists combine these parallel trajectories into a new synthesis for film and sound, which considers how technology, perceptions of the past, and culture have shaped human perception.