SLOW takes threads of texture, pattern, melody, and imagery and weaves multimedia tapestries that dilate one’s sense of time. By stretching time's effect on us these weavings serve as an antidote to our culture's growing sense of accelerating fragmentation.
A hand-crafted experiment in dicing up time by playing guitar live into analog and digitally modeled electronics.
Originally composed as a video soundtrack, Slow revised this piece for audio-only and serves it up as the first piece on an upcoming album.
Originally composed as a video soundtrack, Slow revised this piece for audio-only and serves it up as the first piece on an upcoming album.
An in-progress piece with a baseline that I want to get it out there in raw form before I start problematizing it. If you make it far enough into the video there's a curve ball...
Improvised audio tape mounted on a violin bow played into digitally modeled electronics.
The "sound" of something – its smoothness, say, or its hollowness. Its timbre. Music is traditionally defined by sounds with tonal textures, but expanding outward to include a wider range can make for satisfying compositions.
Beats, sections, measures, pulses – elements that can repeat or seam to repeat. Compositional patterns can work in short-term and long-term memory, creating expectations, then fulfilling or thwarting them.
Tonal material. Periodic content that can string together over time to form melody, or stack vertically to form chords and dissonances. These tend to linger in memory in ways we can repeat mentally whether we want to or not.
For sighted people, what we see and what we hear fuses into a coherent experience. "Audio-vision," to quote Michel Chion. From an audience's perspective, audio compositions exist on a spectrum from visually arbitrary to visually intentional.
SLOW is the sonic laboratory of musician and sound artist David Zerlin.
While playing in alternative rock bands in the late 80's David also composed music for Chicago's theater scene. Recognizing the creative potential of sound in dramatic performances, David starting applying compositional techniques theatrical audio, eventually earning two "Jeff" awards.
David went on to formally study the interaction of sound with other time-based media, including creations and collaborations in film, video, performance, and installations. David has taught sound design at the University of Arizona, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Applying compositional strategies to sound, and infusing sonic, traditionally non-musical elements to his creations, David attempts to break down the distinction between sound and music.
