The Film Concept – Lowell Darling
The Sound Concept – Sasha Pushkin
The project Hollywood Archæology by Lowell Darling (USA 1942), an American concept artist, writer, performance artist and filmmaker, is based on different Hollywood film parts, cut and re-spliced by hand.
Any disfiguration is attributed to car tires, motor oil, grass stain, twigs, garbage, sun, rain, LA water, chemicals and age. Creating the musical composition, Sasha Pushkin respected the original principle of the film concept. He took the raw unprocessed sound of the film strips as a base. Creaks, undubbed actors’ conversations, distortions, unwanted technical noises and micro-pauses, caused by the splices, served as a basis for the rhythmic line. The noises were thoroughly sorted out, processed and cut. Further music layers were then developed on this basis.
In fact, the original archaic sound starts and finishes the whole composition. As the music progresses, the noises recede into the background. However, at some moments they unexpectedly show again, and then become the most important, together with visual images. Absolute synchronization of music and video was not the main objective; though, in many cases, dictated by the plot, the composition accurately follows the scenes on the screen.
Hollywood Archæology PART 3 is divided into three Elements, each of them being self-contained. At the same time, PART 3 can be considered as a complete whole.
Hollywood Archæology credits everyone who has ever worked in or on a film that was shot, produced, processed or lost in Hollywood, California.