Backroads is an installation for projected video and 8.1 audio that explores the sensations of highway hypnosis: delirium, displacement, movement intermingled with repetition and the self-reflections created by being inside your own head for extended periods of time.
This is accomplished by combining long duration, abstracted video shots of driving the back roads of rural Texas with audio field recordings and very slowly evolving organ drones. Backroads explores the dream-like sensation of so-called “highway hypnosis” through surrealistic juxtapositions of multiple sonic and visual environments.
The 35-minute video consists of driving shots that span the variety of geography and seasons in Texas backroads. Each kind of driving footage is accompanied by sound that alters the viewer’s perception of that time/space so as to intentionally disconnect the conscious mind from the reality of the driving sensation. Sonic spaces meld together within the flickering of headlights and lull the viewer into an altered state.

Chaz Underriner (b. 1987 in Midland, TX) is a composer and intermedia artist based in Denton, Texas, USA. Chaz’s work revolves around the notions of landscape and portraiture in the context of experimental music. Chaz has composed works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, chamber and symphony orchestras, jazz combos, and choir and has collaborated with numerous choreographers, experimental filmmakers and animators.

Chaz’s work has been programmed at the 2015 impuls academy (Graz, AU), the 2012 Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt (DE), the Global Composition Conference (Dieburg, DE), Ostrava New Music Days (CZ), Champ d’Action’s Laboratorium (Antwerp, BE), the Charlotte New Music Festival (USA), the Louisville New Music Festival (USA), Dogstar Orchestra (Los Angeles) the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival (Texas) and the American College Dance Festival Association Regional Conference (Texas).