Sounds of Silence festival presents silent film masterpieces with cutting edge contemporary music, performed live. The first day of the festival was dedicated to the Swedish/Danish avant-garde film Häxan for which iii created an immersive performance.
Sounds of Silence Festival invited iii to create and perform a live soundtrack for the screening of Häxan. However, we didn’t find the idea of creating a conventional soundtrack particularly interesting and decided to reinterpret this format, recreating the film’s experience with our instruments.
iii wrote a research article about the development of the project, you can read the full article here
‘Mariska de Groot created a new hybrid instrument combining optical sound techniques already employed in Shadow Puppet and Nibiru, together with the spatial projection technique used by Matteo Marangoni in City Sondols and Echo Moire. Mariska’s instrument projected light from the ceiling to the floor and through a large rotating disk engraved with perforated patterns, creating a moving interplay of shadow and light. The light intensity was further modulated by Mariska using an analogue synth. Meanwhile, two performers wearing white lycra suits moved within the light projection wielding loudspeaker horns connected to photocells. These instruments converted the projected light into sound. The sounds were siren-like and very much “in your face”, contrasting with the slender physique and graceful movements of the performers.’