A collaborative project from filmmaker Sylvain Chaussée and composer Adrian Gordon Cook, Zephyr is an audiovisual performance piece that uses 16mm film loops and repetitive musical patterns to explore cinema’s potential to build up and play with audience expectations. Drawing on the long-standing, emotionally charged relationship between music and cinema, Zephyr reflects on the synchronous histories of the two media.
Biographies:
Sylvain Chaussée is a filmmaker and photographer born in France and based in Toronto. Chaussée’s work focuses on the materiality of his medium, which is realized through extensive processing and printing techniques. As a film technician, he strives for an alternative approach towards filmmaking. In performance, 16mm film loops provide the basis for his imagery, through which the repetition of movement, colour, and texture are integral to the experience of the work. Chaussée is inspired by the physical nature of film, which permits limitless opportunities for manipulation and transformation.
Adrian Gordon Cook is a composer, performer and multi-instrumentalist based in Toronto. Largely inspired by the early minimalist composers of the 1960’s, Cook’s work takes shape within large temporal boundaries, utilizing drones, repetition, prolonged chordal movements and static harmony. Often understated and contemplative, his music shifts subtly as he explores variations between sonic textures. He has a keen interest in multi-disciplinary work, influenced by the new relationships formed when sound is not the sole element of a work. Through their collaborations with one another they have created Zephyr, an audiovisual performance piece. Their mediums mirror each other through progressions between sound and image, rhythm and movement and colour and texture.