| As a musician, when I think about sound, I almost immediately focus upon being in the city. It’s where almost every idea about sound that I’ve had recently has sprung from, solely from being out on the street, walking amongst the people and the traffic. From the moment I emerge from my doorway and step out onto the street, the familiar and welcoming roar of the city overwhelms me: the growl of cars’ engines at traffic lights, the grating of subway cars’ wheels against track, the hypnotic shuffling of thousands of feet upon the sidewalk, the vibration of my watch ticking away the seconds on my wrist, the hourly bell ringing from the church across the street, the songs blasting from the ice cream trucks’ tinny speakers. | 
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Axel Anderson on Austin Willis
As a musician, when I think about sound, I almost immediately focus upon being in the city. It’s where almost every idea about sound that I’ve had recently has sprung from, solely from being out on the street, walking amongst the people and the traffic. From the moment I emerge from my doorway and step out onto the street, the familiar and welcoming roar of the city overwhelms me: the growl of cars’ engines at traffic lights, the grating of subway cars’ wheels against track, the hypnotic shuffling of thousands of feet upon the sidewalk, the vibration of my watch ticking away the seconds on my wrist, the hourly bell ringing from the church across the street, the songs blasting from the ice cream trucks’ tinny speakers. These sounds all act as aural stimuli, forcing me into a quick jog as I cross the street against the light or simply reminding me that another hour has passed. When combined and experienced over time, these small, sometimes unnoticed stimuli all work to reinforce a sense of repetition and to give structure to daily life.
A similar fascination with sound and its phenomenological possibilities pervades the entirety of Austin Willis’ body of work, mainly through an obsession with pattern, repetition and rhythmic structure. This is apparent in many of his videos–Video Choir 1 and 2 , Tape Walk (for Jim O’Rourke), and Car Hornchestra 1–which exhibit a studied and formal compositional technique that is in some respects analogous to contemporary musical production. Video Choir 1 provides a good example of this, as it makes use of rudimentary sound source collection and sampling methods whose applications have normally figured in musical production. In contrast, his silent short films tend to place particular emphasis upon rhythmic patterns and the repetition of a specific gesture or action, imagining a visual representation of properties traditionally associated with sound, such as vibration and sustainment.
The silent 16mm color film Prospect Park Film evokes a process very similar to that of Terry Riley’s phase shifting, used in In C , A Rainbow in Curved Air, and other of his early works. The panoramic single-frame shots of the park and its environs occur in what appear to be a number of repeating figures. This process of repetitious camera movement mimics the repetition of notes in a musical figure as it gradually phases into a new, slightly altered figure, one which morphs slowly in time and leaves the observer unsure as to how the passage was made from the one figure to the next. An effect of dislocation comes with this shifting and phasing, as the viewer’s sense of visual space is yanked apart, images collide and merge into one another, and the quick burst of each image becomes a part of a much larger whole.
In Video Choir 1, Willis exploits basic techniques of digital reproduction and manipulation and redeems them through intimate (many of the shots were taken in the subjects’ bedrooms, kitchens, or studios) and nuanced conceits full of "mistakes" and imperfections that provide evidence of living. Car Hornchestra 1 takes a specifically modern and urban noise—but a sound that for many pedestrians no longer manages to elicit any response (other than that of annoyance)—a car horn. Willis uses the horns, fundamentally built-in sound machines, to stage a performance at a main intersection of town, stripping them of their typical usage and "playing" them rhythmically at a traffic light. This action, direct and simple as it is, disrupts the normal rhythm of the observers’ daily commute and points toward the higher role of sound and repetition in our lives.
