Experimedia Films presents Strange Lines and Distances, an award winning two-channel audio-visual installation by artist Joshua Bonnetta which examines Guglielmo Marconi's first transatlantic radio broadcast. Presented as a special limited edition featuring DVD of the film, 12" Vinyl LP containing an extended score, Printed inner sleeve with Monograph by Jeffrey Sconce, Uncoated Gatefold Sleeve, HD Video & Audio Download Coupons and Optional Blu-Ray Add-on.
The work is inspired by Marconi's belief that sound waves never completely disappear, but rather diminish incrementally becoming fainter over time. He believed that with an adequately sensitive receiver, one could amplify the echoes of history. Strange Lines and Distances looks at and listens to the past, revisiting Marconi's original transmission sites in order to explore the hauntological aspects of radio and landscape. The installation invites a consideration of the monumental impact of the first wireless transmission, and explores the medium's potential to conflate and fragment both space and time.
Strange Lines and Distances dual channels represent the transmission site in Poldhu Cove, U.K. and the receiving site at Fever Hospital, St. John's, NL. Each historical site is documented using 16mm colour negative film. The sonic composition was created from site-specific field recordings, shortwave and longwave radio recordings and archival material. Mired in static and atmospheric interference, the recordings exist as fragmentary spectres of outport beacons, noise, musical passages and human voice. Visually, each channel contains imagery that resonates and rhymes with the opposing channel in terms of shape, line, color, light and optical geometry. Through a visual examination of the sites' topographical similarities, the work plays with the juxtaposition of landscape, architectural ruins, flora, and geological and meteorological phenomena. The images unfold as a series of long shots, and this play with duration creates a montage that asks the spectator to consider distance and the poetics of form.
Joshua Bonnetta is an interdisciplinary artist working with film, video and sound in various modes of theatrical exhibition, performance and installation. His work has shown at The Berlinale, The Toronto International Film Festival, Images Festival, Mutek International Festival of Electronic Music, European Media Arts Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival and others. He is an Assistant Professor in the department of Cinema, Photography and Media Arts at Ithaca College in New York state and has served as a Composer-in-Residence in Electroacoustic Studio ALPHA at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden.