Press :: Earplug Magazine

Review: Hidden Partition
Lightrhythm Visuals

The birthplace of silicon soul, San Franciso has always benefited from a unique mix of artistic chic, programmer geekery, and activist passion; this technologically sophisticated renegade spirit has produced a number of significant subversive movements, including Survival Research Laboratories and the near-mythic ToonTown raves. Appropriately, SF has also become the home to a burgeoning visual performance art and VJ culture — one that has spawned Lightrhythm Visuals, a video label and designer group on a mission to make the work of the world's leading performance designers readily available on DVD format.

Hidden Partition, the newest DVD from co-founder Ben Sheppee, represents the label's first audiovisual release, expanding its image-only VJ Single Compilation VJ tools with soundtracks provided by renowned producers such as the Bay Area's own chop-and-paste specialist edIT, ambient dub superstar Bedouin Ascent, and Ninja Tune's cinematic beatsmith Blockhead. Eleven visual artists, including V2 Labs, Suryummy, and D-Fuse, were invited to remix the video elements of Sheppee's work into their own configuration of dots and loops — some of the results are reminiscent of the analog days, when mixing dual slide projectors onto a taut white sheet was the norm; others are more in line with current trends of software assimilation, mixing vector and 3-D applications with seamless skill. All of the visuals, however, are like the great City by the Bay herself: a beguiling mix of intellect, creativity, and pure sensualist abandon. (SM)
http://www.earplug.cc/mailer/issue45/index.html#watch