The exhibition features 11 video installations, each pushing the boundaries of sonic possibility alongside visuals that question and play with pop culture. The premise of the works is very much based on Marclay’s belief that ‘music is material’, a notion that results in his examination of the meaning of sound and its uses through video art.

Christian Marclay himself has been called a DJ, a musician, a visual artist, a Professor and a composer of various mediums. Currently based in New York, Marclay began his fusion of sound and image in the 1980’s by cutting and literally re-pasting vinyl records and playing these on turntables to create strange music. Since then, his work has maintained a distinctly experimental edge.

Video Quartet (2002) represents with clarity the fantastic ambition of Marclay’s work. Projected across four synchronized screens, Marclay arranges a 15 minute visual and audio extravaganza containing fragments from old Hollywood films like The Sound of Music and Casablanca of actors making sound or playing instruments. At times the collective clips are manipulated to create distinctly unique melodies and beats, at other times there is silence or intense explosions of noise. The result is a brilliant appropriation of pop culture, leaving the viewer both dazed and inspired.

Crossfire (2007) invites the participant to enter a small black room with large video screens shielding the walls. After moments of eerie black silence, what follows is 8 minutes of spliced gun shots from popular films such as Pulp Fiction and Terminator. The firearms seem to aim directly at your head as you stand in the centre of the room, and eventually it becomes clear that the thuds of the gunshots themselves have actually been arranged to imitate percussion instruments.

Perhaps the most exciting installation for an inquisitive mind, Shake Rattle and Roll (Fluxmix) (2004) uses 16 small screens arranged in a circle to examine various objects from the Walker’s Fluxus collection. Each object, be it a wooden toy, a letter, a CD case, or puzzle, is held by a white gloved hand in a sterile surgery environment. Each item is then painstakingly inspected as an instrument with purely audio capacities. This creates the sensation that each video screen is the window to its own world where seemingly everyday objects have their own hidden musical potential.

Marclay’s blurring of visual art with musical experimentation has an exciting outcome that encourages reflection and inspiration. Ambitious, engaging and, at times, confronting, this installation showcases the height of creative possibility in performance art.

The exhibition REPLAY: CHRISTIAN MARCLAY is currently being shown for free in the Screen Gallery at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, just off Federation Square, in Melbourne until Sunday February 3.