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Visual Music Marathon - New York - Review

The MFA Computer Art Department at School of Visual Arts, the New York Digital Salon and the Department of Music and Multimedia Studies at Northeastern University presented the New York premiere of the Visual Music Marathon. The screenings of the 120 visual music works took place in the new Chelsea Visual Arts Theatre, recently acquired by the School of Visual Arts, New York. The theatre was an excellent venue for the screening of the works.   The schedule for the event and the program catalog can be downloaded from:
http://www.2009vmm.neu.edu/schedule.html

I was fortunate to have also attended the Boston premiere of the Visual Music Marathon held
in 2007, hence many of the wonderful works on show I had seen before and had become familiar with since.  After the first presentation of the event, I had some clear favourites, and these were still the case - such as Jean Detheux's wonderful works - Rupture, Liaisons, Daydream Mechanics V Sketch 3, Semiconductor's 200 Nanowebbers, Fran Hartnett's Navigating the Pearl System, Gordon Monro's Dissonant Particles, Larry Cuba's Calculated Movements, Dennis H. Miller's White Noise , Scott Drave's 165 Star Oasis.  After the viewing in New york other works came to my attention, the incredible lucsious works of Stephanie Maxwell - Time Streams and All that Remains and Bonnie Mitchel's 2BTextures. The skilfull composition of Barbara Neubauer's Passage, the rhythmic constructions of Brian Evans's Pipilo, the drama of Jeffers Egan's Bati Dominance.

To be fair, all the works were incredible in this marathon.  This is also a credit to the artistic director Dennis H. Miller, who curated the works that were shown.  The Visual Music Marathon program catalog is really worth exploring, if you wish to further investigate any of the artists whose works were shown at the event.  Download the program from the Visual Music Marathon North Eastern University homepage. Quick link here.

George Stadnik presented a really exciting installation of his lumia compositions on 3D tv and demonstrated an exciting presentation of the possibilities of lumia compositions in installation settings.  There were two live acts who presented their live audio-video performances in the Visual Arts Theatre - the incredibly tight minamilist work of Chiaki Watanabe with David Galbraith music.  The incredibly colourful work of S2; SIMSTIM SQUARED with Marjan Moghaddam on images and Adam Caine on music.  Interestingly, the live acts drew a packed audiences into the theatre who many left before the incredible film of Jean Detheux.  What a pity.  Still, nice to see some young people there, taking an interest in Visual Music.


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