Independent Project

Seek Assistance is an aesthically dark myth projected as noise and interference which intensifies with intrigue and mystery. The delicate investigation of micro materials is echoed by intricate lighting effects that appear to print the subject upon one's eye. This micro interplay between sight and sound firstly illuminates the subject yet hints at macro forms that exist past the light, beyond any sound, and ultimately transcend the physical frame.

The video Seek Assistance takes us to the starting point of a tube journey when our valid ticket is rejected. The system refuses to allow our passage. This is a work composed out of sharp and exact editing, distinct configurations of abstract light, form and image within the suggestion of a narrative collision. Visually there are strong references of early modernist cinema and photography, Man Ray, Rodchenko and Moholy Nagy appear as references meeting visual forms that derives from a fast world of commercial video. We are left in a state of an in-between of passage, combined with interruption and detour. This is the place that a subject might either be composed or undone.

The 12th Annual 'Not Still Art' Festival

'...The mood intensifies with "Seek Assistance." Vishal Shah masterfully denies us access to signposts which might reveal what he is after. The sound design of Adam Stansbie is formidable - surprising, shocking and impressive.  It is the contrasts - instant and subtle - that provoke and rivet our attention.' Carol Goss, Artistic Director, 2007.

'Seamus News', July 2007, Issue 3

'...Most of the 3D animation works I viewed were rife with cliché: smoke rings, intertwining rope-like lines, slowly spinning objects, and wonderfully deep, yet terribly familiar virtual scenes such as cloudy skies, seas, or infinitely repeated moving forms occurring at diminishing scale (usually resembling bats flying underwater or something equally surreal). In cases like this, it was incredibly difficult to forget about the easily identifiable generated environments and focus on compositional content.
Vishal Shah’s “Seek Assistance,” with music by Adam Stansbie, was a definite exception. From an initial series of flashes and abstract patterns of light, a human head slowly revealed itself, moved through a series of transformations viewed through lighting screens, then unexpectedly shattered. Stansbie’s music deepened the dark visual space with accelerating / decelerating noisy clicks, bowed rhythms and granular streams operating in attractive counterpoint with Shah's images.'. Seamus - Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States.