CEREBRAL GRACE is a personal project initiated and directed by Stockholm based English photographer Anthony Hill.
The project took inspiration from the 2010 ground breaking ’electro-acoustic’ project ’Music of the Mind’ by musician Finn Peters, which dealt with brainwaves in music and new forms of algorhythmically based composition and improvisation.
In 2012, after becoming aware of the ’Music of the Mind’ project, Anthony took direct contact with the creator Finn Peters to ask permission to create a short film based on a similar theme. Finn not only agreed but also kindly sent a selection of raw sound files created by the bespoke software written by Matthew Yee King specifically for their project. Not pretty to listen to, but fascinating to think this was the sound of a brain, infact Finn Peters brain to be precise.
At around the same time Anthony had been working on a dance project with Hugo Therkelson, from the Stockholm Royal Ballet. Anthony became intrigued how the body was so graceful and beautiful compared to these chaotic brain sound files currently in his possession. Imagine how the brain waves created during the precise choreographed movements of a ballet could sound.
It seemed like an exciting challenge to put them together somehow.
It so happened that Hugo was also a professional musician, so took the raw ’brain’ files obtained from Finn Peters to his sound studio and several weeks later produced a musical composition entitled ’A Dancer’s Requiem’.
The final step was the film. Together with Stockholm based film maker Daniel Gustafsson, Anthony produced a short film in which Hugo choreographs (and improvises) dance to the ’brain’ soundtrack, utilising high speed cameras to stop and speed small moments in the choreography.
The project was exhibited in Stockholm 23rd - 25th March, 2018.
Director – Anthony Hill Director of Photography – Daniel Gustafsson Choreography + Soundtrack – Hugo Therkelson Production Assistant – Ole Jansson
Many thanks to Subtopia, Stockholm.
