INTERFACE

REVIEW

www.soundtoys.net

Reviewed by: Tim Birch

Shockwave is a fantasy term promising technological wizardry to all who download. Notwithstanding the limits of PCs, the tools available to artists, or of the pressure of time spent online, there could be a pot of gold at the end of one's time-lag travel. www.soundtoys.net is more of a rough diamond. It's a new audiovisual art site where, Shockwave permitting, you could experience generative music and new explorations in interactive media or an immersive sound environment in 3D. More fantasy?

Emphasis upon the audio element is real enough. The absence of spurious posturing beneath sound-art fanfares is good to see and even better to hear. After all, isn't the text-heavy internet the zenith of literacy: the modernised and intellectualised world? So while the spoken word, storytelling, and sounds of pre- and post-literate societies don't get much of a look-in, soundtoys helps to pioneer aural pleasures to decent effect given the problematic task of achieving this online.

Dependent on your PC, soundtoys may take a while to download. Beyond that, the text is small-to-indecipherable. Navigation is also a little bemusing as each piece opens in a new screen, such that there is no forward or back icon active. No doubt some folks will collapse windows and forge ahead, but others may be baffled, and lost (for good?). Hopefully not though, as the work shows a real range. Some is typical net.art, playing with the aesthetics and (mis)use of code (is it supposed to be like that or is it an error?). Others trade in boorish discourse (man versus machine), while one or two are marvellous: well-observed, audiovisual mayhem with staccato sounds to bedazzle the click-happy visitor. As Big Brother would say: you decide.

Notably, www.soundtoys.net are welcoming new work, so get in there!

Writer detail:
TIM Q-TIP BIRCH

tf.birch@yahoo.co.uk | www.blacksheepagency.co.uk

Venue detail:

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