Artist: Sara Ludy.

Sara Ludy is a multimedia artist and musician based out of Los Angeles. Graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus in video and sound art, she has continued on to co-found an organization called Tremblexy, an experimental audio/visual collaborative that creates “immersive sensory experiences through the use of sound collage, electronic manipulation, repetition, projections, and improvisation”. Ludy creates both single and multichannel video installation, sound, electronic instrument construction, digital collage, drawing, and painting. Her goal, as an artist, is to attempt to transcend the traditional audio and visual experiences through experimentation with medium and structure to create unique worlds of experience, allowing her opportunities to perform or present in places spanning from high end retail locations to museums and established galleries. Reviewing her work, I came across an array of audio/video projects for which I felt mixed emotions, some catching my attention as new with a great perspective, and others I found strange and/or dull.


After searching through her work, there was one piece that I found most interesting and another that I did not appreciate as much. The first is titled “Colored Morphed Clouds” and is a combination of a visual of moving clouds and an audio of electronic like sounds, both of which change in intensity, varying in color of the visual and tone and volume of the sounds. The image, only showing slight movements, goes through an array of stages of color, changing from one solid color to multiple hues and intensities. As these colors shift, the audio divides itself into different layers, one a background, base tone, another which fluxuates with the flickering of the colors, and then occasionally additional others which emphasize certain sections of color shifts by creating shifts in the music. The volume and intensity of the sound can, at times be overwhelming, hitting pitches that create harsh feelings to the body, shaking the skin. These quick shifts in both elements make the work very abstract, removing most identifying visuals and audios, yet occasionally surprising the listener with familiar background noises of everyday activities or ringing phones and reducing the intensity of the color change, allowing for recognition of the skyline. By creating the abstract elements, the artist allows the viewer to experience an overload of the senses, stimulating audio and visual instability at a fast rate and causing the mind to question what it sees, with both pleasing hues and shaking imagery, while the audio of the clip creates distraction and irratic thought and concentration within the viewer. Inserting the familiar allows one to focus and identify just before being taken back into the confusion of the work. Overall, I enjoyed this video “Colored Morphed Clouds” for its stimulating, varying hues and intense overwhelming music.
The second work is titled “Snokel” and is of an unidentifiable figure, most likely constructed by the artist, that is made to twist about as the color and audio changes in the piece. It seems to have eyes and a trunk, causing one to see the figure of an elephant, but it is too abstract to be able to identify it as one specific thing. The audio is more melodic than the first, moving up and down the scale and in series’ of notes more pleasing to the body. I did not like this work as much as the first because of images that were chosen to display this “creature”. Toward the end there are a series of close shots into the “eye” structure of the figure, preceded by a sort of thrashing about of the subject. Although this is not a formal critique, this piece made me more uncomfortable and uninterested in the work of Ludy.