st// is a collective made up of Joel Ong (guitar, electronics, broken circuits) and Mark Wong aka kulturekampf (no-input mixer, kazoo, electronics)
Our performances feature structured improvisation based around abstract visual scores. In one piece, we used the quotidian landscape to form inspiration for our duet of broken instruments. prepared guitar, no-imput mixer, kazoo.
st// has performed in singapore at the Choppa music festival and in KL at the Findars Gallery both in 2009.
st// Choppa Notes
In non-Euclidean geometry, a pair of parallel lines may finally meet on a point at infinity. In this Ever-Reaching into boundless continua is a constant flow of flux, a plane of immanence, a movement in stillness.
Building on the graphical notations by composers from Cage to Cardew, the artists have composed a “video score” of lines and grains that will then be performed by a transmutation of signals across the sight/sound boundary. On top of this interpolation of visual cues is the additional element of improvisational interactions between the two performers to create a matrix of multi-logues.
st//ll (pronounced “still”) does not attempt to find a conclusive visual-musical language, although the themes of continuity, repetition, dynamism and space are both fields of sight and sound. What it tries to reveal, through the course of the performance, are the interpretations around these central themes, where, through the conversations of both artists welding their instruments as mouthpiece, we find sympathetic resonance and serendipitous dissonance in the melding of parallel minds.