Phill Niblock (USA)

Video-art, computer music, audio-visual installation

Phil Niblock, American conceptualist, composes music for traditional instruments, but not quite in traditional manner. Musicians perform his works in real time, but then acoustic sounds are sampled and lined up in rows and stacked entailing various microtonal changes that slowly alter the music flow.

Could a sound alteration be imperceptible for ear? For Niblock's music, it's out of the question. Unlike Glass and Pendertzky, Niblock has dissociated himself from traditional performance schemes. His music has only a formal need for performers. Actually, the one and only genuine performer of his music is The Sound or, to put it more precisely, its time-n-space model step by step created by a composer. Niblock's music is patterned by the sound and nothing else.

After some time of phonation auditorium acoustic space turns into some kisselwise stuff absorbing any foreign noise. Stark background comes alive at a slightest movement. For instance, it could be a head-nod. Certainly, Niblock's works deal a lot more with perception than with technique and musical score.

Besides, he presents films, video and computer-engineered black-n-white abstract images changing one another.

Since 1985 Niblock is at the head of the Experimental Media Foundation in New York. He supervises projects "Music and Intermedia" (since 1973) and governs XI Records label.