{"id":12777,"date":"2013-05-31T20:26:55","date_gmt":"2013-06-01T01:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=12777"},"modified":"2013-05-31T20:26:55","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T01:26:55","slug":"contact-festival-finale-patent-pending-leaves-us-in-the-shadows-of-doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/05\/31\/contact-festival-finale-patent-pending-leaves-us-in-the-shadows-of-doubt\/","title":{"rendered":"Contact festival finale: Patent Pending leaves us in satisfying shadows of doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The first of three performances of Patent Pending by Karen Ostrom and Spectrum Music at the 918 Bathurst Arts Centre on Friday evening (John Terauds phone photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Spectrum Music<\/a> collaborated with visual artist Karen Ostrom<\/a> to present a mix of words, music and animation to close this year’s Contact Photography Festival in enigmatic style at the 918 Bathurst Arts Centre on Friday evening.<\/p>\n

If you’re reading this early enough, there are two showing remaining tonight — at 9:30 p.m. and 11 p.m.<\/p>\n

I have no idea what the show, titled Patent Pending<\/em>, meant, but it was clear that all of the elements melded beautifully to make for a 30-minute experience of visuals and music that amounted to more than the sum of their parts.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it was a meditation on the repetitiveness of daily life, mixed with the similarities and differences of two people in a relationship. But all of the characters shown on three large video screens were variations on Ostrom herself.<\/p>\n

Was she commenting on how we project our own opinions and emotions onto those around us?<\/p>\n

It felt like a relief when I decided I didn’t have to answer that question, or any others. Instead, I let the images progress before my eyes.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the moment of final revelation will come later, in a dream, or in a wakeful moment at 5 a.m.<\/p>\n

The soundtrack for these videos was a collection of six pieces, three of which repeated at the end, by composers Ben Dietschi, Shannon Graham and Caitlin Smith.<\/p>\n

These minimalist-style compositions, each distinctive yet strangely the same — much like the videos we were seeing — were nicely performed by violinist V\u00e9ronique Mathieu, trumpeter Lina Allemano, pianist Stephanie Chua and double bassist Jesse Dietschi.<\/p>\n

The most beautiful moment for me was hearing aleatoric trumpet sounds from Allemano, as her fingers expertly recreated the clickety-clack of an old sewing machine on her instrument’s valves — meshing perfectly with a video of someone sewing.<\/p>\n

Ostrom also provided a poem to go with the show — printed in the programme, and presented in installments on the video.<\/p>\n

The opening lines should have given me a clue that it was time to shift brain into neutral, and enjoy the unfolding to come:<\/p>\n

This is not a Love Story
\nIt’s the being of two minds
\nwhere the factories hum
\nin a relative calm
\nWhere action meets inaction …<\/p>\n

John Terauds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spectrum Music collaborated with visual artist Karen Ostrom to present a mix of words, music and animation to close this year’s Contact Photography Festival in enigmatic style at the 918 Bathurst Arts Centre on Friday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,8,10,19,35,36,37,38,47,52,58,62,63,68],"tags":[6451,885,1846,2571,6471,3087,6474],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/03\/psalms1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-3k5","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12777"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}