Photo by Oliver Benton, from Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scotland, 2019
The clear, strobing rectangle a 16mm Pageant projector produces when running at silent speed without any film in it flickers just below the threshold necessary to maintain the illusion of continuous light, inducing minor hallucinations. A single sustained sine tone harmonizes with the low hum the projector makes; then a chord from the harmonium interacts with the first chord. All this combines to produce a steady, yet unstable harmony. Since it is tuned to the projector, the music resonates with the flicker and any change in the beating of the frequencies appears to affect the hallucinations.