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The Musical Tracing Ensemble is an experimental performance project in which a group of musicians listen to a song together, but with each person hearing only an isolated track of the instrument they play. They then attempt to replicate the sounds they’re hearing as best they can on their own instrument in realtime, and the audience hears only these secondhand, improvised impressions (or ‘traces’) of the original song. Here, accompanied by a dreamy, hand-painted animation from the US artist Allison Schulnik, the effect is oddly engaging, as the skills of the performers collide with their naivety of the music, creating something that sounds halfway between a melodic professional performance and an avant-garde experiment.
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
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Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
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Home
An artist endeavours to bring the Moon down to Earth in a ritual of yearning
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Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
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Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
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War and peace
A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?
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Life stages
What Michelangelo’s late-in-life works reveal about his genius – and his humanness
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Biography and memoir
Preserving memories of a Japanese internment camp, and the land where it stood
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Making
Trek to a remote Himalayan village where artisans craft teapots fit for kings
11 minutes