EPISODE 24 — Psyché Tropes

Psyché Tropes Episode 24
11pm, 22 July 2024 on Resonance 104.4 FM

Presented by Steven McInerney, Psyché Tropes Episode 24 on Resonance 104.4 FM investigates the experimental rotating devices invented in the 1800s that gave birth to the earliest forms of the moving image.

Inspired by Faraday's wheel, Joseph Plateau in Brussels and Simon Stampfer in Vienna independently invented the phenakistoscope in 1833. Stampfer called it the stroboscope. In England, it was known as the fantascope. This disk was a pre-film animation device that displayed a sequence of drawings or photographs showing the progressive phases of motion.

In 1834, William Horner invented the daedalum, later called a zoetrope. The name was composed of the Greek root words zoe, "life," and tropos, "turning," translating to the "wheel of life." Here, the phases of movement are seen as a loop through slits, producing the illusion of movement in the viewer's perception of time.

The constant repetition of the trope permeates the human experience as a figurative device. As repeating themes continue within our culture, we find comfort in their predictability, through the mechanics of literature, sound, and vision.

The zoetrope evokes nostalgia for a time before film, as the analogue, the handmade, and pre-industrialization proto-meme or gif. Yet these cultural objects of a bygone era are still being manufactured today by artists as a response to the over-saturation and overstimulation of digital media, turning the zoetrope into an activist format, appealing to 'an anti-corporate commitment to technology.'

Since 2008, musician Dan Hayhurst and visual artist Reuben Sutherland (aka audiovisual duo Sculpture) have been testing the limits of the zoetrope vinyl disc as the ideal carrier for their uniquely synaesthetic combination of animation, video art and unstable electronic musical forms. Discs such as Rotary Signal Emitter (2010) and Plastic Infinite (2014) encountered significant viral popularity and ended up becoming highly influential.

Now available for preorder, Sculpture’s new album Max Ax is the product of constant recombination of wildcard sonic and visual elements into new forms in performance. Catching a live set by the duo is to enter a maximal portal into their visionary aesthetic, as Sutherland's kaleidoscopic visual turntablism and Hayhurst's analogue/digital hybrid of electronic pop and experimental splatter combine in free associations and unstable reactions. Max Ax is the capture of one possible frame in this ongoing sequence, but it is also Sculpture’s most direct and focused transmission yet. Max Ax marks a first collaboration between LTR Records and Psyché Tropes. Available on deluxe double gatefold 10” zoetrope disc and download. The album is available direct from LTR Records and Psyché Tropes, as well as from select record stores, online and via all streaming services.

Sculpture’s music may be compulsively metamorphic but consistent intent and stylistic confidence connects these eleven compositions. Sutherland's artwork playfully references recurrent motifs in the duo’s work. The opaque corporate/scientific department with its maze of abandoned zones, threatening containment while inviting exploration. The visual language of product design and commercial exploitation is subverted in absurdist combinations of the organic and synthetic, banal and fantastic, geometric and cartoonish. Cryptic devices are simultaneously futuristic and medieval. The facility has been compromised in some unknown event and strange code has broken through.

Following on from Max Ax is the Betacam SX tape mix of the 2019 Psyché Tropes 5-inch lock groove zoetrope disc Projected music, mixed with Hayhurst's 2018 tape rework of a Creak In Time followed by a brand new Max Ax remix by Zylitol

Exactly one decade ago Psyché Tropes birthed its first release, HFF Vol. 1. A triple vinyl compendium of wayward electronics by artists working in the field of audiovisual performance who had previously exhibited at the Hackney Film Festival during the years 2010 to 2012. Playing out episode 24 is the opening track 'Compatibility Crystal Change' by Sculpture.

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