The Sydney Festival promises quality collaboration and a celebration of cutting-edge creativity. Nicole Lizée’s innovative program of manipulated image and music fulfils this promise several times over.

The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) , which started under the leadership of Paul Grabowsky, is seen here obviously thrilled to work on stage with the award winning composer. In the two works it plays in, the orchestra boldy realises Lizee’s reworkings of sound and scenic fragments from popular TV, film and karaoke film clips.

For an event which champions the Canadian turntablist and composer’s clever manipulation of elements, the title is also tweaked from Steven Soderbergh’s popular 1989 comedy, Sex, Lies and Videotape to describe Lizee’s twentieth century influences.

During the opening Lynch’s Etudes, on a screen above the stage we see small excerpts from the TV and film classics of David Lynch. These are reworked through savage reiteration, visual scratching and dragging. Time and vocal pitch in scenes from Wild At Heart, Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks are also warped heavily.

These manipulations are underscored by the expressive and exacting reading of a scored part for acoustic grand piano, provided by Canadian Eve Egoyan.

The work was commissioned by Egoyan and the keyboard variety required makes it befitting of the piano étude style and legacy of disguised technical skill set used traditionally in this genre. There is a curious but satisfying symbiosis to experience between image and musical motif.

Lizée’s work 8-Bit Urbex follows, transporting us back to the vintage graphics of 80’s and 90’s video games. The eclectic and supersubtle score including great retro synth sounds feeds off re-fashioned sight and sound bits of the game vistas in this gloriously sentimental mash up flying about before us. Expert timing in Lizée’s craftmanship and the AAO’s delivery highlights variations of both the visual and musical rhythms.

There are quite lengthy stage resets in between programme items due to the nature of instrumentation wedged onto the Angel Place stage. Each time, however, the wait is well worth it.

This was never truer than with the set up to Duo, as two turntable desks were wheeled in for the improvisation collaboration between Nicole Lizée and Martin Ng. The time needed for set up allowed current AAO Artistic Director, Peter Knight a chance to warmly address the festival crowd.

Duo unfolds with progressive colourful intensity and shape, displaying immense technical turntable brilliance from both exponents. It is a thrill to be able to experience the intricacy and fruit of their combined arsenal of sound event options.

Lizée’s fun and irreverent Karappo Okesutura (‘empty orchestra’) concludes this event again featuring the orchestra. Lizée’s signature detuning and deconstruction of the audio visual elements continues. In this, the most narrative project of the event, a singer struggles against a wildly changeable karaoke accompaniment.

Lizée has re-written and cunningly re-mixed the backing tracks and ubiquitous karaoke video clips to sabotage the singer’s 15 minutes of fame. Hits such as Eternal Flame by the Bangles, Whip It by Devo and The Longest Time by Billy Joel all come under Lizée’s superbly creative hatchet.

Once you are in this hypnotic new groove you don’t want to escape back to the usual sonic atmosphere. All ends well with a humorous and engaging de-arrangement of karaoke favourite, Endless Love.

Sex, Lynch and Videogames is an entertaining Sydney Festival event, also important to the development of contemporary and mixed media performance in this city. There are no repeat performances during the Sydney Festival.