Daniel Vlček
Mumble Buzz
Artist
Daniel Vlček
(1978, Strakonice), Czech
Original Title
Mumble Buzz
Date2019
Medium4 channel audio installation beeswax, iron dust, pigment, magnets, sensors
Classificationsmultimedia works
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionDaniel Vlček is a prominent Czech artist and musician whose knowledge of musical composition and electronic music technologies forms an essential component of his artistic practice. Vlček’s work often bridges the boundaries of painting, sound, and installation. A fundamental feature of his paintings is layering—he covers the surface of the canvas with acrylic paint before proceeding to paint over it with oil paint after it dries. Subsequently, Vlček meticulously yet instinctively engraves abstract and often geometric patterns into the oil paint using styluses and other instruments, creating lines which resemble those of a vinyl record and reveal the layers beneath. In other works, Vlček scans imagery from books and magazines, coating the images with black and white paint before engraving through the paint, thus revealing the scanned layers underneath and thus creating temporal records which betray inaccuracies stemming from his partially hand-crafted technique. Vlček’s essentially monochrome canvases often achieve a moiré effect as the seemingly uniform surface is permeated by tones of purple, blue, and green. This hypnotic interplay of lines and layers represents noises and sound waves as well as overlapping temporal layers which fuse elements of the past, present, and future. This expression conveys an intangible mix of feelings regarding the present times, a sort of “civilizational sound level” in which silence has been replaced by a perpetual murmur.
Mumble Buzz (2019) is a rotating circular painting resembling a vinyl record. Simultaneously, it serves as a data repository as it contains magnets which use sensors and a modular system to play looped, pre-recorded audio footage of bee colonies in flight. Edited in postproduction, these sounds induce an atmosphere of an intensified buzzing of a bee swarm. Through the editing process, the initial, fully natural recording is transformed to sound more like incomprehensible noises of human civilization, creating a metaphor for the unintelligibility and complicatedness of our world.
Daniel Vlček (*1978, Strakonice) studied in Martin Mainer’s painting studio at the Brno University of Technology from 1998 to 2001. Following a year spent at the Accademia di Brera in Milan in 2000, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studying painting under Vladimír Skrepl (2001-2003) and new media art under Veronika Bromová (2003-2004). He is a member of the audiovisual activist group Guma Guar, which was most active in the decade following its founding in 2003.
Mumble Buzz (2019) is a rotating circular painting resembling a vinyl record. Simultaneously, it serves as a data repository as it contains magnets which use sensors and a modular system to play looped, pre-recorded audio footage of bee colonies in flight. Edited in postproduction, these sounds induce an atmosphere of an intensified buzzing of a bee swarm. Through the editing process, the initial, fully natural recording is transformed to sound more like incomprehensible noises of human civilization, creating a metaphor for the unintelligibility and complicatedness of our world.
Daniel Vlček (*1978, Strakonice) studied in Martin Mainer’s painting studio at the Brno University of Technology from 1998 to 2001. Following a year spent at the Accademia di Brera in Milan in 2000, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studying painting under Vladimír Skrepl (2001-2003) and new media art under Veronika Bromová (2003-2004). He is a member of the audiovisual activist group Guma Guar, which was most active in the decade following its founding in 2003.
