Static Channel

Audio-Visual Collective, Static Channel, on Building Immersive Cymatic Landscapes

BY MILES FORRESTER | April 27, 2022

Valencia / Espoo

Static Channel - Photo by Talia Ricci

Joining smART Magazine from Espoo, Finland, and Valencia, Spain, Monika Hauck and Alex Ricci are the two halves of the performing duo Static Channel. I first experienced them playing shows in makeshift venues across Toronto. Using cymatics (visual representations of sound waves) induced by Alex’s groove-heavy bass, Monika would manipulate and project a swirling vat of pigments, immersing the room in rumbling colour. They are an act a fan can follow, adding new sounds and visual implements to each performance and installation. Over the pandemic, they’ve taken time to develop their upcoming multimedia project Levadas, a meditation over distance, memory, and place.

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Letitle

sM | What new forms of expression do you find interesting in this trend towards combining visual art and music in performance?

AR — I mean, some people even talk about what venues should smell like. The stuff that I’m into is exploring the convergence of these two fields in such a way that it doesn’t even necessarily seem like music anymore; it seems like something that you can’t quite define.

One thing that’s really inspired me here [in Valencia] is this festival called Volumens, which a few of my professors are involved in. In particular, Professor Marta Verde had a really cool collaboration with another artist, José Venditti, called Omen. He was playing saxophone over his modular synth music and she was doing modular visuals—affecting it with gestures and video feedback. That element of the human — making little mistakes, little variations, little choices in the moment — I think that’s what other humans want to see in a performance.