PAUL SCHÜTZE

UK ambient pioneer Paul Schütze releases new installation soundtrack

Without Thought was conceived as an installation work for video projection / stereo sound /

stereo fragrance. The first component was the film, shot in Greece in 2016. The vantage point is a clifftop I have visited many times. A strange sense that the water curves up into the hemisphere of the sky here is always startling. The surface of the sea perpetually coruscates with patterns describing wind movement. The entire landscape feels sentient. The sound was constructed in direct response to the image. The stereo image is unusual in that it has no centre. Every element is perpetually moving in the image field. For this reason, it works best heard through speakers. The sound is both harmonically, structurally and texturally unresolving and fluid. My aim was to amplify the emphatic formlessness of the waters. The olfactory elements were created last. They began as a complete fragrance encompassing both the marine and terrestrial aspects of the place. The image you see, while excluding the land necessitates the viewer be land-bound so the two zones are inextricably connected in this film. The complete fragrance was then split into earth and sea elements. The two groupings are diffused from positions in the space mirroring those of the sound diffusion. The two scents blend to varying degrees in the space depending upon the position and movement of the viewer/auditor/olfactory. This work continues a theme of anti-narrative which has been present in my sound-works for nearly four decades. We make stories to emboss meaning onto the surfaces of life. Those surfaces shrug of our scribbling like leviathans in troubled slumber.
Paul Schütze

About Paul Schütze

Paul Schütze was a member of seminal australian experimental collective Laughing Hands. In the late 1980ies he started a prolific solo career that has placed him among the top artists in the field of ambient and electronic music. Paul Schütze has been active not only as a musician and composer but has also worked in the fields of photography, film and video art, site specific installations, painting, curational work and perfume design. His work has been exhibited or performed internationally in museums, galleries and festivals. He has produced numerous sound tracks for experimental film works. Major audio releases have been Deus Ex Machina (1989), The Rapture of Metals (1993), Apart (1995) and Fell, together with Andrew Hulme of O Yuki Conjugate (1996). Paul Schütze is also noted for his long running collaboration with artist James Turell.