ohrenhoch presents on Sunday
25. September and 2. October 2011, 2pm - 9pm

Tough Sky

audio + video installation (2011, world premiere)
by Mark Trayle

Mark Trayle on 'Tough Sky' [13:32]:

I once heard the term "tough sky" used in a radio broadcast of a baseball game. It describes the difficulty of seeing the baseball against a white, cloud-filled sky. I thought it invoked an image of a kind of material texture, as if the sky were a rough surface instead of an almost-empty space. Far from being empty, the sky is filled with animals, signals, and vapors. It's a very busy place.

The piece is constructed from a few hours of footage of the sky. Clouds move in the background, outlines of clouds move in the foreground, downsampled skies split the screen into twos and threes. The sound is from processed field recordings (taken at the same time and place as the video) with a bit of digital synthesis thrown in.