Littoral Zones

Like much of Sabrina Ratté’s video work, this collection for Undervolt & Co. explores the visual and sonic relationship between modular synthesis and simulated space. In all three pieces – Littoral Zones, Landfall, and Habitat – Ratté uses her signature modulator technique to intricately layer a series of moirés and checkerboards that bring depth to the otherwise flat surface of the video screen. Where others create depth through recording or simulating hallways and tunnels, Ratté bends the signal of the video itself to carve out corridors of an undetermined distance. In each work, the viewer is positioned at the precipice of a burning horizon, a white blinding light cleaved from the video out of signal rupture. Superimposed objects that suggest architecture built from primitive geometry plotted by CRT scan lines interrupt the view. As jagged sine-wave mountains rise into the frame and built spaces distort our perspective, Ratté relishes in the symbolically suggestive properties of her familiar abstract forms. The pieces taken as a tryptich feel like a meditative journey outdoors; one taken in order to imagine a new kind of domicile. As a result, this collection offers a new and ornate perspective for the artist and for the viewer. We begin in Littoral Zones peaking around the corner of an entryway – looking out over the threshold and seeing a world of crystalline light anticipating our departure. But the room spins with our uncertainty to exit, and with each turn the light in the doorway becomes all the more enticing. The marvelousness of the light compels us to keep turning, but when the video settles on departure we find ourselves confronted with a multitude of paths, each more complex and inviting than the last. Eventually, we make our escape as we begin to view – or make, as the saying goes – Landfall. Viewers are surrounded by a purple-hued jaunt across the hills and valleys of synthesized countryside. Moments of geometric clarity flicker into view, showing the façade of a building or the corner of an imagined site. However, as these features and forms come into view, their rearrangements and reconfigurations reinforce an ambivalent feeling toward their construction and usefulness. As the upper half of the video becomes occupied by a ceiling of stripped stalactites, the glimmers of architecture become more pronounced, playing off the features of the space that has formed around us. It’s not until we arrive at Habitat does the wandering eye of Ratté’s interlocuteur find respite in a cascading curved form soaked in the color of a pale sunset. The revelation of this habitat creates a visual serenity rarely found within the quivering feedback lines previously employed in Ratté’s work. The simplicity and exactness of the vertical lines that dance across the screen in Habitat suggest a kind of transcendental arrival at a near-perfect modular frequency where the input and output harmonize. These lines are pulled back like stage curtains to expose once more the gleaming horizon, this time delicately tinged with a rainbow spectrum created from gamma ramped signal saturation. In this collection, Ratté’s compositions are equally matched with an elegant score by long-time collaborator Roger Tellier-Craig. The forms and pacing of these works by both artists shows a marked shift into a space of deep meditation. Far from the earlier experiments that propelled Ratté into international attention, these works show a maturity of form and an intimate understanding of video as malleable material. - Written by Nicholas O Brien