scub-a-kite project on kitec.net
documentation about underwater kitefly

with kitedive workshop in march 2002 i searched
all available web archives about "underwater kite kitefly and art"
but no result. the only hits were with search like "water art"
and which was not satisfying either.

so, i really thought that i was the first to do this in that way.
i knew about the 1991 photos in a magazine, where the french
team 'overflot' was flying stuntkites under water, but this was
not intended as art or performance, it was to find extreme
surroundings for a photowork.

then with the launch of the kitedive-web, i learned from
tal streeter that jackie matisse from california was already
practising underwater 'kitetail' installation and performances.
i found a picture about and it made me very happy to see
this bellissimo floating work!

Tudor’s 1983 installation of Sea Tails,
a video collaboration with filmmaker Molly Davies and French artist Jackie Matisse.
A unique exploration of music and performance, “Sea Tails” integrates audio and visual media
into a new form of collaborative art, merging Tudor’s experimental sounds
with Davies’ filmmaking artistry and Matisse’s fanciful underwater kite sculptures.
The recreated installation allows today’s audiences to experience the 20-year old work as it was first staged,
along with a display of personal notes, archival sketches, letters, charts, photographs
and other material exchanged between the three artists during the creative process.
Sea Tails: A Video Collaboration” presents the version of the piece that premiered at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris on June 3, 1983. Visitors viewed an arrangement of three pairs of video monitors showing colorful kites undulating in blue water, accompanied by an evocative electronic score. Twenty-two minutes long, the work’s three channels of video and audio play in a continuous loop, suspending the viewer in time and space.
Tudor recorded the source sounds that he used for “Sea Tails” while on location with a film crew near the port city of Nassau in the Bahamas in February 1983. For eight days, Matisse and a team of divers pulled her kite creations through the water while Davies followed them underwater and filmed these underwater kite sculptures. Tudor stayed on board with headphones to monitor the recordings he was making of the underwater sounds. He categorized the sounds he collected and then layered, mixed, and rerecorded them. The result is a score with rhythmic percussive clicks that form patterns viewers will begin to see and hear in the installation video.

for the historics :
our first underwaterkite plenum was held oct 5th 1998
at vidoo-workshop 'chikkenhof' suchteln germany
| tom | roro |

i heard that there probably was some underwater stuntkiting
done by TOTL team in the late 80ies
- who knows more ? -

there were also some ideas and very basic experiments with
flying kites into the water in 1986-1988 when i started
with the kiteshop (northsea germany)

coming soon? : video document about stuntkiting underwater
by rx from 1979 (kitefestival holland)

 

 

back to : scubakite main page

beirut uw-performance photos july 2002

underwater-kite workshop thailand march 2002

link : orig. first and concept scubakite-page on subvision.net

 

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