IQBIT - Electronic Music Composer - Collaboration with Visual Artists

Barcelona based IQBIT is an electronic composer from Rome based in Barcelona, Spain. IQBIT collaborates with Visual Artists, creating electronic music and sound for collaborative video and audio visual projects.  The works from these colloborations are both linked to research in synaesthesia but are also definitely are Visual Music.  Their visual music arises from a collaboration between music composers and visual artists, so the resulting video is a unity of the composition of visual and audio material.  Some of the videos are live sets - consisting of live audio and video. The words used to describe their works - sound video. Their live sets are described as Audio Visual Projects.
Iqbit myspace link: http://www.myspace.com/iqbit

Collaborations with xx+xy visuals

Bo Za AV project

IQBIT has created the sound for a Audio Video live set with visuals by xx+xy visuals.
This project is called Bo Za AV project and is documented online on the xx+xy visuals website. There are also high quality video excerpts.
Project Description: "Abstract and graphic audiovisual language presenting itself into rhythmic synch where the transfigurations is controlled thorough the digital animation process. The live project, sound and imagery are synchronized asserting a form of glitch minimalism re-assembled into rhythmic audio-visual landscape. Time of the gig 30min."

http://www.xxxyvisuals.com/projectBoZa.htm
Watch Live Link

Rabbi

AV collaborative project by xx+xy visuals with IQBIT
"Experimental video project based on sound by IQBIT. The name of the work is directly inspired by the name
of the sound piece from IQBIT EP Liminal ‘08. This work is based on single black and white image that was
chosen among variety of images commonly used as desktop picture and typically representing beautiful
landscapes displayed on our desktop computers. This image is not representing any more urban landscape
with one bridge heading to some-where but is reconstructed into abstract and unique audiovisual language
presenting itself into rhythmic AV synch where the transfigurations is inspired and also controlled thorough
the digital animation process. This digital process of transfiguration of the image into abstract and computer
based work that use sound as source material, gives us the possibility to re-construct animations and
imagery through controlled rhythmic audio synch and effects of the software. The Rabbi sound and imagery
are synchronized asserting a form of glitch minimalism re-assembled into rhythmic audio-visual landscape. "
Source: Rabbi Project Description
http://www.xxxyvisuals.com/projects/AV_Rabbi_xxxy_iqbit/Rabbi-description_bio.pdf
Video excerpts at the above link also.
Quick link to video here.
Rabbi version 2 video link.

Zpac and Shart

Watch Zpac
Watch Shart

Collaborations with Lasal

Kristallographie - 2009



Links
xx+xy visuals
Lasal
http://www.myspace.com/iqbit

Center for Visual Music to Preserve Fischinger Experiments

June 12, 2009 - Animation World Network Headline News - Top Stories

Center for Visual Music to Preserve Fischinger Experiments

http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=top&newsitem_no=28079

Center for Visual Music has received two new grants for preservation of very early Oskar Fischinger animation experiments.

The first grant is a prestigious Avant-Garde Masters Grant, to support the preservation of three nitrate reels of Fischinger's original 35mm experiments from his RAUMLICHTKUNST multiple projector cinema performances of the 1920s. The grant is funded by The Film Foundation and managed by The National Film Preservation Foundation. The Film Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in 1990 by Martin Scorsese, dedicated to protecting and preserving motion picture history. Joining Scorsese on the board are: Woody Allen, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Curtis Hanson, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee, George Lucas, Alexander Payne, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg.

The second grant, received from The National Film Preservation Foundation, supports CVM's preservation of an early reel of Fischinger's 35mm nitrate black and white animation experiments from the late 1920s - early 1930s, which includes early Muratti cigarette commercial tests.

Center for Visual Music is a nonprofit archive dedicated to visual music, experimental animation and abstract cinema. CVM has received a series of film preservation grants and funding from public institutions and private sources over the past six years enabling its preservation of animated films by Fischinger, Jordan Belson, Jules Engel, Charles Dockum, John and James Whitney, Harry Smith, David Lebrun and others. CVM provided films for the 2005 Visual Music exhibition at MOCA LA, the 2003 Jules Engel Retrospective at Redcat Theatre, and many international festivals and museum exhibitions.

Join CVM and help with their preservation and promotion of experimental animation (and collect cool vintage Fischinger and other premiums!) 

www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Membership

Fischinger research pages: www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Fischinger

martin böttger - QUBY

QUBY

QUBY from tsaworks_martin Böttger on Vimeo.

Martin böttger, Germany has several videos on Vimeo - some of these are also installations. Excellent work and great audio visual connections.  This video he created with Maya.
His Blog: tsaworks

Of his many video excerpts on vimeo, this work creeated in collaboration with Bruno Dias is wonderful - such tight 3D integration with the audio.

Tractor

TRACTOR from tsaworks_martin Böttger on Vimeo.

Vimeo Video Channels

There are some really interesting vimeo channels showcasing contemporary work in the audio visual field. These channels are a great opportunity to see what is going on with audio visual work/art/music today. They also demonstrate how many different fields that audio visual works are taking place in - such as in installation settings, as interfaces, in gallery spaces, as films and animations led by music collaborations and music label collaborations - there are just so many ways now in which audio and visual are being put together...I like to still call all these approaches visual music. (Author Comment)

Experimental Motion Graphics Channel http://vimeo.com/channels/motiongraphics

Designflux
http://vimeo.com/channels/designflux "Designflux exists as a quarterly publication, bringing together interviews, reviews and portfolios of the best in contemporary motion design. This channel acts as a means to showcase work we are watching at Designflux as well as to publish special information on up and coming issues. More info at www.designflux.com"

Check out also http://vimeo.com/videomusical - suggested by Gabriel Shalom

VPlay: An Interactie Surface for VJing by Stuart Taylor

This demonstration of an intereactive surface for VJing is excellent. The purpose of this interface is as said by Stuart Taylor on his vimeo page. "VPlay is an interactive multi-touch surface designed to open up the practice of VJing, encouraging new creative dialogues to be formed between VJs and members of the audience." http://vimeo.com/2738692

VPlay: An Interactive Surface for VJing from Stuart Taylor on Vimeo.

Ron Pellegrino - EMERGENT MUSIC AND VISUAL MUSIC: INSIDE STUDIES

NEW VISUAL MUSIC RESOURCES from Ron Pellegrino

Ron Pellegrino's website has an extensive amount of resources that are of great relevance for any studies into visual music and visual music visualisers.  Not only does it document his own work, but also provides links to his writings on the area of music and visual studies and writings and resources on visual music. For example some really excellent resources can be found linked from the homepage of his website - http://www.ronpellegrinoselectronicartsproductions.org/
Topics and Resources such as:
Visual Music
Compositional Thinking

Of interest is his recent writings and resources and a book and DVD now available.

EMERGENT MUSIC AND VISUAL MUSIC: INSIDE STUDIES - BOOK and DVD - 2009

Some new visual music resources from Ron Pellegrino that should be of interest to music visualizers:

Just released on Amazon.com  and now available are 

EMERGENT MUSIC AND VISUAL MUSIC: INSIDE STUDIES

Part 1: The Book Part 2; The DVDs
a project of electronic arts pioneer, Ron Pellegrino. 
To learn more about the project go to the following URL - http://www.ronpellegrinoselectronicartsproductions.org/Pages/OhNineSiteExtension/Introduction.html or copy "EMERGENT MUSIC AND VISUAL MUSIC: INSIDE STUDIES" into Amazon.com's search field. Amazon Link Here

VISUAL MUSIC SYNTHESIS SYSTEM

eBay Auction Materials for a Sonic and Visual Music Synthesizer - Synthi AKS and Laser Animator

Also, a unique visual music synthesis system is on the auction block at eBay and will be there until Monday, May 18, 2009. To learn more the system go to the following URL - Sonic & Visual Music Synthesizer.. or go to eBay and copy "Sonic & Visual Music Synthesizer - Synthi AKS & Laser Animator" into eBays search field.

Earlier Visual Music Resources

The Electronic Arts of Sound and Light - The Electronic Arts of Sound and Light by Ronald Pellegrino (c) 1983 by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company Inc. ISBN 0-442-26499-2. The following website provides excerpts from this book.

"I signed the contract to write The Electronic Arts of Sound and Light in the spring of 1977, started working on it in the fall of 1977, and finished it during the summer of 1981. During those four years I spent more than 9 months out of every year on the road giving multimedia performances in the USA and abroad, teaching music composition and technology for a year at Miami University and for three years at Texas Tech University, consulting on business electronic arts projects, founding/directing and finding funds for The Leading Edge Music Series in Lubbock, Texas, and helping to establish the long running New Music America Festivals. In other words, I was actually working on the subject material of the book and writing about it during the cracks in my schedule.

....

The book covers the first 14 years of my research in the electronic arts - from 1967 to 1981. ... it's the first book to deal in detail with the subjects of visual music, real-time composition, and performance multimedia with electronic instruments (in the 70s and early 80s it was called intermedia or integrated media).

The notion of visual music, a sphere I've been exploring since the late 60s, is just beginning to pick up steam in the late 90s probably because the younger generation of artists is growing up in a multimedia world. The vast majority of older (over 30?) visual artists tend to be studio, gallery, and object oriented. They are materialists with a weak sense of the ephemeral and whatÕs involved in articulating the dynamical flow of time. Specialists in music seem to be too busy with their notes or generally disinclined to explore the sphere of visual music. Finally in the late 90s the new breed of multimedia artist is emerging, younger artists who seem to sense that today's instrument of the electronic arts, the multimedia computer, has the built-in facility for integrating the electronic arts of sound and light. The multimedia computer and a language like Java, that can function as a software multimedia synthesizer, bring us to the threshold of a visual music age."...

Source: Ron Pellegrino - Read full excerpts at:
http://www.ronpellegrinoselectronicartsproductions.org/Pages/EASL_Intro.html

Some relevant links

Visual Music Laser Images

Visual Music

Main Website for Ron Pellegrino

http://www.ronpellegrinoselectronicartsproductions.org/

Katherine Lubar - Colour to Music Intervals - Painting

Applying Concepts of Musical Consonance and Dissonance to Colour

An edited version of this article was published in the May 2004 edition of the journal Leonardo (Vol. 37, No. 2)

Katherine Lubar is a painter and musician who applies concepts of musical consonance and dissonance to the use of colour in her paintings. This article on colour intervals is a most comprehensive account of how she does this in her work, it is also an excellent article documenting a colour to music interval correspondence. (Author Comment)

"After comparing the colour intervals to their musical counterparts, I do feel they share something in common — the colour intervals don’t have the same character as each of the musical intervals, but both seem to follow a similar pattern in terms of which work harmoniously and which don’t. In addition, I have realized, from this research, the importance of the element of contrast to both visual and musical compositions. So while these correlations may not all work on a practical level, they can at least give us a greater understanding of colour on a more metaphorical level. The idea of correlating colour intervals to musical intervals could possibly provide a new method of examining the way colour is used in visual compositions. It is worth analysing paintings that work well colourwise, to see how their intervals relate in terms of consonance and dissonance. I would invite the reader to apply the principles outlined in this paper to such works and to use their own perception of colour to investigate these ideas further."

Website: http://www.katlubar.com/html/theories.html

Preserving Visual Music - By Holly Willis for Blur + Sharpen

Preserving Visual Music - By Holly Willis - May 8, 2009

"After more than 70 years and the explosion of visual culture, the stunning animated films of Oskar Fischinger remain unparalleled. Fischinger, who emigrated to Los Angeles from Germany in 1936 and became one of the city's central figures in a burgeoning avant-garde filmmaking community, created dozens of dazzling visual explorations of sound...

This question is tackled head-on by Cindy Keefer, Director of LA's Center for Visual Music, which is dedicated to this particular genre of experimental film...

one of the Center's key objectives is preservation. In this context, CVM recently announced that it has received funds from the Avant-Garde Masters Grant (which is funded by The Film Foundation and managed by the National Film Preservation Foundation) to preserve three reels of Fischinger's original 35mm nitrate film experiments from his Raumlichtkunst multiple projector performances of the 1920s."
Extracts from the article by Holly Willis
Read the full article >>

Visual Music and Abstract Animation Playlist - YouTube

Two playlists that I add to every so often on YouTube are Visual Music and Abstract Animation. They are by no means exhaustive, but I hope to add to this more frequently. If you have any suggestions for YouTube links that I could add to these playlists, please do email me at: mmcd@soundingvisual.com I have other playlists but thought it useful to embed the more relevant ones here.

Visual Music Playlist

Link to Visual Music Playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F5838B01D3B5A7CC

Abstract Animation Playlist

Link to Abstract Animation Playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=678CDE1A94F6651C

Experimental Music Video Playlist

Link to Experimental Music Video Playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3AB1EC6363EE36E2

Composer - Ronan Guilfoyle - Rhythm Book/Essays

Being Irish of course, I am aware and familiar with contemporary music composition in Ireland.  I hope to make more posts about music composition or things musical that could be helpful for visual music or audio visual work. Ronan Guilfoyle is one of the prominent contemporary composers working in Ireland today, he is also a Acoustic Bass Guitarist and Educator. It has always been of interest to me that Visual Music has at its core a strong consideration for music composition or a musical thinking to composition. What is it that is being explored with visuals that is so musical - one of the more important elements is rhythm - how time is handled. Ronan has written some essays on the subject of rhythm in relation of course to music composition and jazz in particular. They are available to check out on his website.(Author comment)

The essays on rhythm - some of the titles listed on his website - such as
 'creative rhythmic concepts for jazz improvisation;
the rhythm book – 10 years later……….;
"where's the 1!?";
the art and science of time ii;
contemporary music?;
what is jazz?;
the art and science of time;
philosophy of jazz?;
control freaks?;
composition and improvisation
can be viewed at:
http://www.ronanguilfoyle.com/press.html

Cimatics\09\Festival - Call for Works

CIMATICS\09\FESTIVAL Brussels

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS.
DEADLINE: JULY 31.2009

Cimatics - Brussels International Festival for Live Audiovisual Art & VJing - invites all artists, creatives and producers to send their submissions for the next Cimatics festival.

Cimatics festival takes place from 20th - 29th November 2009 at various locations in the centre of Brussels.

The 7th festival edition will again bring an extensive overview of what's currently taking place at the crossroads of media, art, music and technology.
See: http://cimatics.com/cms_site/news/archive/article.php?id=53

Online submission form at:
http://www.cimatics.com/entries/index.php

biot(h)ing - Invisibles - Alisa Andrasek

I have just come across this most interesting installation research project to be shortly exhibited in paris. There is a lot of imagery that uses software generative processes to create "scripted" imagery - these images are always incredibly beautiful, and ordered displaying the most wonderful 'ordered' patterns that would be very hard to realise/create by hand processes. When these patterns are tied up to audio processes, then the most incredible synergy seems to take place. This project is a very physical realisation of both scripted animation and an interactive sonar field. What caught my eye was the imagery and the tight connection with sound. (Author comment)

"biot(h)ing - Invisibles is an interactive installation exhibited at the Prague Biennale and is to be exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2009. ‘Invisibles' by biot(h)ing uses holosonic speakers to create sound patterns projected into an interactive space. These speakers isolate individual cones of sound, creating a counterintuitive experience for the visitors as they move through different vibrations of sonar projections. At the same time LCD Screens display streams of information as it crystallizes and becomes visible through pulses of dynamic morphologies of 3D Cells scripted in animation software. These crystallized streams may also be affected by the physical environment through an interactive sonar field. At the core of this audio/visual/physical interface is an interactie sound programming environment that alters conventional forms of musical composition through the incorporation of algorithmically based processes. The user navigates the software's internal intelligence less like a composer and more like a programmer, adjusting various parameters to indirectly influence the system's internal network dynamics. The granular synthesis of sound results form the generation of thousands of short sonic grains which are combined linearly to form large-scale audio events."



"biothing is a research-design laboratory whose structure derives from particular linkages between various disciplinary and technological nodes, promoting intra-specific creative relationships which in turn serve as a transformative tissue for the design process itself..."
http://www.biothing.org/flash.htm

More info on biothing at:

http://www.biothing.org/wiki/doku.php?id=biothing

biothing has published work see wiki link below


http://www.biothing.org/wiki/doku.php

See also:

http://scriptedbypurpose.wordpress.com/participants/biothing/

This work is incredible - stunning.  Definitely worth adding a link to the photos on flickr

Flicker photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30976595@N00/

Sound out of Paper - Research Project - Andrei Smirnov

"Sound out of Paper is a research project in progress related to the technology of synthesizing sound from light called Graphical (Drawn) Sound technique which was invented in Soviet Russia in 1929 as a consequence of the newly invented sound-on-film technology. At exactly the same time similar efforts were being undertaken in Germany by Rudolf Pfenninger in Munich and, somewhat later, by Oscar Fischinger in Berlin. As such the history of the Graphical Sound is an interesting cross section of 20th century history, reaching from the euphoria of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century inventors through the paradigm-smashing experiments of the Soviet avant-garde in the 1920's and 1930's to the cynical clash of ideologies of the Post-war years and finally to the dawn of the digital era in the 1970's."
Source: Andrey Smirnov :: main projects at - http://asmir.theremin.ru/gsound1.htm
Theremin Center
Moscow State Conservatory
Bolshaya Nikitskaya 13
Moscow, 125009
Russia

Heike Sperling : Visual Music Resource

Excellent and really relevant resource on Visual Music authored by Hieke Sperling.

"Dr. Heike Sperling is co-chairing with Prof. Manfred Becker the post-graduate-program Motion Design at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg since 1998.
She has also been teaching at the University of the Arts (HFK) Bremen, the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg, Austria, and the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland in Basel."

Heike's website also documents her own work and students work where she teaches visual music, it also documents talks and workshops she gives.



All screenshots link to pages of her website
Website

Kate McKeon - Adrift

Music Video by Kate McKeon, based in Ireland for Band Halfset.

Halfset - Adrift - Kate McKeon on MUZU.


See Kate McKeon's Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/katemckeonphotography

I did an earlier post on Kate's Visual Music Piece- Carnival
Link to it here