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CLINKER | PRESS & INTERVIEWS

EXAMINER ARTICLE | JULY 2008

Live cinema explores Cohen’s other side...
Written by Joelle Tomek

The wizard of Oz has nothing on Gary Joynes. And you won’t find Edmonton’s new media whiz hiding his sound system behind a curtain. Joynes, who goes by the stage name Clinker, is packing subwoofers fit for Rexall Place into the Citadel’s intimate Rice Theatre this weekend for a live cinema tribute to Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. The show is part of the Leonard Cohen International Festival, which is coming to Edmonton after taking Manhattan and Berlin.

Joynes is layering bass tones from Cohen’s voice with audio and video mixed on the spot. “I have a matrix of 36 buttons under my left hand and each one of those I’ve programmed to trigger a certain video or a certain clip. And then under my right hand, I have various sliders, trigger buttons and dials that are all mapped to various effects parameters,” Joynes says. Add two computers and a microphone, and you have the heart of his elaborate setup.

Joynes usually performs live cinema – a European new media movement – in major centres like London and Montréal. Last year, he opened Mutek, a global electronic music festival. Lately, Joynes has been working as a senior artist with the Banff Centre’s new media program. Joynes spent the first 12 years of his music career singing and playing bass in rock bands, where he learned sound engineering. He also has two decades of visual art under his belt. In live cinema productions, Joynes amplifies a piece of music with high-tech surround sound and lighting effects, adding his own voice as an oscillator.
The result is what new media artists call a “deep listening” experience. “You feel like you’re sitting right inside (the music),” Joynes says.

As far as he knows, his Cohen-inspired piece, On the Other Side, is the largest and most technically advanced live cinema production Edmonton has seen. On the Other Side explores themes of light and darkness that recur in Cohen’s work. A series of what Joynes calls bass-scapes are Bhuddist-inspired meditations on Cohen’s voice. “I would call them my Cohen mantras or what I envision his mantras to be when he’s meditating. And these pieces are meant to roll through the body and have a real physical effect on us,” Joynes says.

Long-time friend and Guitar Hero runner up Les Robot will help Joynes close the show with three Cohen numbers. The production also incorporates some of Cohen’s poetry. “It’s definitely the most mainstream festival I’ve ever been involved in,” Joynes says. “Some of the work that I’m doing might be a little bit much to just drop on an unsuspecting audience and take them into this real experimental world … I wanted to ease them in and give them some familiar territory. That’s where Les Robot comes in.”

The five-day festival, running July 23 to 28, will draw Leonard Cohen devotees from around the world. Joynes says many Edmontonians are unaware of Cohen’s connection to the city. “Cohen spent some really important time here when he was an emerging artist. In fact, he saw some of his very first success and attention … while he lived in Edmonton,” he says. Unlike Cohen, Joynes plans to stay awhile. “I’ve lived in the city my whole life and I’ve set my roots here. My family’s here,” Joynes says. “I’m not one of those artists that (feels compelled) to go to Montréal or Vancouver or New York to do his work. You have to send your work out to those major centres to be successful but, as far as a place to work from, I think Edmonton’s a beautiful place to live.”