Sense Absence

Daniel Rothman, born in New York in 1958, is a clarinetist and composer trained at the Yale School of Music, where he studied with J. Druckman, R. Reynolds, and M. Subotnick, among others. Paul Tzanetopoulos, born in Athens in 1953, works with digital techniques, video films, sounds, and electronic and computer components. Both live in Los Angeles and present their first collaborative work, the sound-light installation “Sense Absence.”

“Sense Absence” is a 168-hour cycle whose repetitions differ only in random dropouts and random recurrences, so that no two cycles are alike. At the outermost limit of perceptibility, Rothman’s 33-minute string quartet is heard at the beginning, transporting a different sonic space into the Hans Otte space in which it now lives. According to Daniel Rothman, “The sound is the atmosphere of other spaces and perhaps other times – predominantly that in memory, enhanced by the hues of light. An almost imperceptible, subtle intensification of the mood develops through minimal changes in the material. But whatever perception recognizes is subverted. Ninety percent of the music will gradually and as if by chance disappear within 84 hours, leaving the cycle of light. And as gradually and randomly as the music disappears, it will return.”
“Sense Absence” refers to the limitation and uncertainty of our perception through temporal and spatial dimensions that can be imagined with our senses, but can no longer be grasped. We are deprived of the experience of what we can know beyond the abstract. Rothman calls “Sense Absence” an “elegy written by the sonic character of space,” – a lament about the limits of our perception and sensation.

The string quartet by Daniel Rothman on which the installation is based was recorded at ORF by the Kairos Quartet. Tim Stutts is responsible for the computer programming. “Sense Absence” is supported by the Durfee Foundation, Kino Flo Systems, Inc, Siemens AG (Bremen branch), Hochschule für Künste/Studiengang Digitale Medien Bremen and Nordwestradio/Radio Bremen