DVD installations

Palme d’Or nominated film maker Pia Borg and experimental audio visual artist Robin Fox are quality assets from the Australian underground.

The dvd installations “Palimpsest” by Borg and “Backscatter” by Fox are a welcome and valued addition to the Netaudio lineup.

Robin Fox is working in the fields of computer music performance and audio visual diffusion. “Backscatter” is a series of films for the cathode ray oscilloscope with a rotary display that shows the the frequency of the waveform circling round a still, central point as its zero baseline. The visuals do not accompany the music, nor vice versa: the two are mutually dependent manifestations of the same signal.

Musically, he has released two albums with composer/performer Anthony Pateras (“Coagulate” on Synaesthesia and “Flux Compendium” on eMego), one album with double bass player Clayton Thomas (“Substation” on Room40) and a record with band Beta Erko (“I’m OK you’re OK” on Quecksilber).

Pia Borg is traditional when working on her animation techniques – she uses carefully composed montages of old photographs, found objects, human hair, scanned textures, dust or insects on 16mm footage. “Palimpsest” is paying homage to photographs of spirits from Victorian times. Characters appear, disappear, then re-appear in a ghostly exploration of time and space. The film features sound and music is assembled by Mark Harwood (Synaesthesia) who also appears in a brief cameo as a ghost.

Borg’s black and white, six and a half minute animated film Footnote (2003) was nominated for the Palme d’Or in the 2004 official Cinéfondation selection at Cannes.