Beatbox 口技

Directed by Jani Ruscica

18″

2007

*

Batbox/Beatbox is a pair of experimental short films by Jani Ruscica which physically reveal the limitations of human vision. The two films juxtapose very dissimilar environments: nature depicted through bats’ nightly echolocation, and the urban metropolis of NYC, navigated by hip-hop artists. These are two radically different ways of using sound and movement as tools to navigate and identify one’s environment. Ruscica took the sounds of horseshoe-bats recorded for Batbox, and asked the beatbox artists shown in Beatbox to use them as a stepping stone for musical improvisation. In Batbox, the sound and movement are biological phenomena, in Beatbox they are cultural. The searchlight that shines through the woods through which the bats fly, reminds us of our own, human blindness in the dark; whereas the spotlight that highlights the suburban streets, basketball courts and subway tracks in Beatbox reveal the urban space as a stage. In the course of the film, the personal and local environment of the beatboxers becomes universal; the mundane becomes epic, reflecting the core of hip-hop culture.