BSc Students visit Tate Modern

Students taking the BSc in Music, Sound and Technology recently met at London’s Tate Modern gallery to experience Christain Marclay’s film The Clock.  Marclay’s work connects with many topics that were discussed in the Music, Sound and Technology module throughout the term, including musical and audio-visual techniques of sampling, cut-up, splice and montage, as well as wider issues relating to authorship. and the use of environmental or found sound as compositional materials.

Current student Fabian has written evocatively about his experience of the trip.

We woke up that last Friday of our first term, excited and exhausted. It had been a long term of lectures, labs and assignments – but today was the day. We had only one more class, then the famous Christmas Cabaret – an all-department event filled with music, dancing, and a little too many bottles of wine.
The morning was raining and cold yet none of that mattered because we were going to the Tate, one of the better modern art museums in London. Our lecturer, Tullis Rennie, brought the perfect storm. The last day of term, Christmas cabaret, and a field trip instead of class – it felt like being in primary again.

The reason we went to the Tate was due to their showing of The Clock, a 24-hour film by Christian Marclay. The film is a collection of shots of clocks arranged in real time, i.e. it is 10:24 in the morning so you see a clock in the film at 10:24. Thousands of shots from films arranged in perfect timing to the real world, so that every minute there’s at least one instant of the time. It could be a simple bedside clock, or someone can ask for the time and a character replies. You can see slices of popular films as well as random shots from films you would’ve never seen before. This collage is nothing short of a masterpiece, with the most impressive part being the cohesiveness of the shots in combination. Audio flows from one to the other, and the tracks make contextual sense – it’s not just random shots thrown around. It’s a precisely edited and arranged piece of art.

We sat in the Tate theatre for around an hour in the morning, seeing the 10:15-11:15 am section of the film. I would recommend anyone that wants to see this piece to see it at any time they are able to. In the morning the film will be riddled with shots of people going to work, and at night with people stumbling home from a pub; yet every minute is an interesting peak into the way that civilization moves around in our 24 hour time frame.
I only hope that we can have more field trips to further our outside experience into the arts. Go! Watch it – experience it.