Oscar Powell, Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs reassemble their first “H!-sensitive film” film, ‘multi-mendy 1-3, recombined’.

a ƒolder describe themselves as a “polyphonic outputting organism”, a fluid space of artistic production that marries the “hYper-ac⊛ustic composition” of Oscar Powell with the “H!-sensitive film and image work” from artists Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs.

In ‘aƒ222 ➜ multi-mendy 1-3, recombined, 300 r-vs ➜ amstad, eknæs’, powell’, a ƒolder reassemble their first “H!-sensitive film”, ‘aƒ2 ➜ multi-mendy 1-3, recombined ➜ amstad, eknæs, powell’, in a process that interrogates the way in which we use time to order a composition or a video work.

“music can generally be conceived as a relationship between time and pitch: this note plays here; that note plays there etc”, explains Powell in a text entitled ‘all speeds ➜ notes on aƒ222’, which you can now view in its entirety here. “as our conception of time unfolds, so too do notes, phrases, chords, verses or loops [↯] — all predicated on time passing as we perceive it.”

“by using alternate relationships to ground a piece of music, it melts, dissolves and recedes from centre-stage. for me at least, the experience of music becomes instantly foreign, which I think is beautiful — it becomes something you need to make sense of, unpack and explore.”

This reconfiguration of time also extends to Powell’s collaborative relationship with Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs, as he explains: “in the live sessions we have done, time would often quite literally dissolve. suddenly it was already lunchtime; whole days could feel like minutes, which on reflection would feel like hours. this sensation is probably not dissimilar to what many of us are feeling now, as the pandemic reorients our experience of time. I’m not even sure what month it is.”

It is this malleable approach to time that ‘multi-mendy 1-3, recombined, 300 r-vs’ revolves around: “it became apparent to us all that when you subjected the music and the image to the same temporal dislocation, they became, if anything, more closely entwined than before”, continues Powell. “at normal speed, image and music still lead vaguely different lives; accelerated by 300%, they seemed to be in a merry dance. the relationships were not just preserved but enhanced: they were intensified across time.”

For more information about the a ƒolder project, visit their website. The first two a ƒolder albums are available now on Bandcamp.

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