Feuchtigkeit (2010)

«Feuchtigkeit» (German for moisture) is a collaborative audio-visual installation by Hanns Holger Rutz and Nayari Castillo. Using an arrangement of glass plates which function both as screens for video and sound, the overall impression of the piece is one of motion within stillness, and video and audio chose a careful balance between pure sensation and associative scenery.

The installation was originally created as a counterpoint to be exhibited along with «Dissemination» in a show titled «Reverberations» at gallery ESC Graz. Re-verberation was conceived as the re-mainder after one leaves a space, as the re-sonance of thoughts which accompany one over a long time, infinitely echoed inside the head. An experiment to put the atmosphere into vibration.

Three glass panels are staked from the floor. The proportion of each plate, 2:1, is reflected by the outside form, and along the figure of 3 is used throughout the piece. The video material, reflected from the satined surface, consists of three long shots of rain, dripping water, and foam, and is itself fragmented into three parts by the plates. Although almost black-and-white, the glass gives the image an iridescent green and cyan appearance, depending on the viewing angle.

The sound composition, too, is split into three distinctive materials which appear across three channels, by using the glass panels as diffusion-membranes. It runs in three independant loops of prime number durations, so as to form never-repeating conincidences. Although the three materials are found on all three plates, they have been composed in subtile variants of colour and texture for each plate. A sustained colourful-vibrant surface is contrasted with a slow breathing rhythmically-mechanical layer and the sound of strongly decelerated drops, all of which are articulated with the strong resonances that the glass plates impose on the sounds.

Sound edit from ESC (play along the video loop)