The Warp Whistle Project – Paul Schuette

The Warp Whistle Project is the collaboration of Mary Laube and Paul Schuette.

The Warp Whistle Project is a cross-disciplinary collaboration that investigates the relationship between sonic and visual information by staging various points of intersection. Visually, the work has taken various physical forms including conventional painting formats, video, and site-specific installations. Sonically, each project integrates unique technologies (CMOS synthesizers, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, etc.) for the production of sound, motion, and light.

We focus on the collision of multifarious forms and ideas as a way to uncover new problems for further investigation. As John Cage would say, we observe a working method “that, though coming from ideas, is not about them but produces them.” Our practice is rooted in experimentation and freely draws inspiration from diverse theoretical and historical discourses. Stops along this path to date have included theoretical physics, phenomenology, color theory, superseded scientific theories, video games, and 1950s science fiction.

Our recent work explores the notion of Nostalgic Futurism, which we define as a yearning for a time when it was possible to imagine a corporeal, tangible technological future, uncomplicated by knowledge of the current moment. Visions of the future cannot escape the ideologies of the present moment. Similar to the nature of memory, these projections are romanticized ideations, born from a longing to “be elsewhere.”

Aerial, exhibition at Tri-Star Arts, Knoxville TN

Moonbeams and Sattelittes is a single-channel video piece produced by filming a kinetic painting (acrylic, MDF, foam-board, LEDS, and electronics). The score/sound was composed by Paul Schuette and performed by the horn trio Kywylria. Projector house was constructed from MDF and acrylic.