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The Root of All Insanity?

By Pauline van Mourik Broekman, 21 January 2004

Get lucid in Hull

the root of all insanity?Hot on the heels of last year's SKINT, this year's Root festival comes with a more enigmatic title: LUCID - new ways of seeing. Apart from all its associations of visual or conceptual clarity, lucid also means "of or relating to a period of normality between periods of insane behaviour". It seems likely that the festival's centrepiece POL, Modell 7, by Granular Synthesis, will put to rest any perceived polarity between these two states. Granular Synthesis's previous work, NoiseGate (M6) presented the audience with a jittering, convulsive, tic-plagued human face steered and commandeered by a machine which seemed to have access to more than just its own operating system. Spectacular, and profoundly unsettling, Granular Synthesis's hi-tech performances have done the rounds internationally to high acclaim. For LUCID they are being joined by local DJs in Hull's Ice Arena. With the 'five day identity plan', a giant zoetrope and fifty foot grass photograph featuring elsewhere in the programme, it's fair to say that if you need a system update on voyeurism, scientific experimentation and photosynthesis this is where you're most likely to get it.

PvMB

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