Audio and Video:
Sea Tails (1983)


Davies / Sea Tails still frame
 
Sea Tails is a six-monitor, three-channel video installation that brings together film footage by Molly Davies of underwater kites fabricated by Jackie Matisse and an electronic score derived by David Tudor from tapes of underwater sea sounds.

Davies filmed the kites "flying" underwater on Nassau in the Bahamas in 1983 while Tudor simultaneously collected sounds. This excerpt shows the opening footage from one of the three films.

Matisse / Hand painted card with announcement of Sea Tails premiere
 
At left is an invitation card that Matisse sent to Tudor. She laid the program for the premiere of Sea Tails (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, June 1983) inside a delicate plastic sheet on which she lightly painted abstract forms suggestive of her colorful kites.