"From Méliès we can learn to consider the cinema as a medium animated by marvelous moments owing little allegiance to banal narrative structures that hold them prisoner ..... These images may be thought of as 'shots' in a purely mental film of which we are at best the director or at worst the continuity girl"(Paul Hammond. "Marvellous Méliès")
PICKADELIC as a method is working in that way. It originated from a method for creating soundtracks with samplers, developed by Hans Kroier since 1992, which structures the interface of sound and image by systematic connections of foreground-background-relations. The selection of source material affords the creation of something like a self-controlled mental filter, capable to detect any kind of hidden similarities and analogies. This filter may transcend the dimensions of macro and micro in the same way it transcends the boundary between acoustic and visual space.
On this conceptual basis the projects PICKADELIC DIGITAL DUB, VISUAL PICKADELICS and the PICKADELIC HOMEPAGE (under construction) were realized. They are accompagnied by an ongoing cultural research, continuing some of Hans Kroier's former academic studies and centering on sub-histories of alternative modes of cultural connection. PICKADELIC RESEARCH is using artistically generated filters of perception to open up peripherical phenomena of cultural history for semiotic analysis. Its method can apply to diverse fields, like everyday-design, religious art, film soundtracks, advertising, medieval forms of representation, traditional syncretisms or postmodern styles of music. It discovers traces of a structural esthetic of effects, which are based not so much on the use of extreme sensual stimuli - like the psychedelic subcultures - but on the mental effects of illegitim semiotic connections and dream-like patterns of permutation.
The forthcoming CD "PDD - Pickadelic Demonstration Disc" processes a pool of about 100 Samples from all over the world and from different decades into 10 tracks of a dub-inspired one-hour remix. For the release of the record a club performance is planned, presenting the material as a live-mix straight from the sampler and accompagnied by the Ambiant-exhibition 'VISUAL PICKADELICS'.
The next release in preparation will be a concept album emerging from Hans Kroier's cultural research. 'Tamtam Fiction' is the secondary result of a radio-essay, trying to process all kinds of aural stereotypes concerning 'jungle' and 'natives’, which, as a popular phantasma can be traced back to the twenties. The recent musical term ‘Jungle' provides stylistic inspiration and serves at the same time as a metphorical filter for sample selection. Decontextualized fragments of such clichés from seven decades will be united in a dream-like soundscape, with their different sound-surfaces revealing the cliché as a historically generated fiction.