Visual Music

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 .

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 informat...

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 .

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 P...

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) K atherine 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 ...

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...

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 boo...

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

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) "b iot(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 indi...

"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 R...

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

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

EXYZT is a inter disciplinary collective based in paris ( architects, artists, cooks, graphic designer, vj's, ... ) These video excerpts documenting are so good I had to embed a few of them here, so I could easily come back to this post again and view these incredible vj/dj/performance, live, architecture sets - see their video channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/exyzt Boom-Box / Dj'stage / EXYZT / 1024 / Nuit-Blanche / Amiens / 4. oct 2008 USHBOOM / EXYZT @ Karosta / 2007 "A Video performance at the Labichampi festival in karosta ( Latvia )... As ninauguration of the timber structure we built in the an abandonned soviet house we performed on the facade thanks to a very simple set up. 1 mac 3 4500 lum beamers ... K@2 futur art center ?! in 2010" Square CUBE / ETIENNE DE CRECY LIVE / Model Test Vimeo "An amazing electronic music live by Etienne de Crecy at the "transmusicales de Rennes" music festival" Etienne De Crecy Live 2007 Transmusi...

California NanoSystems Institute, UC Santa Barbara "The AlloSphere is a unique, one-of-a-kind scientific instrument that is a culmination of 24 years of Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin's creativity and research efforts in media systems and studio design. She approached the design of the AlloSphere in much the same way that she composes a piece of music... The AlloSphere space consists of a 3-story cube that is treated with extensive sound absorption material making it one of the largest anechoic chambers in the world. Standing inside this chamber are two 5-meter-radius hemispheres constructed of perforated aluminum that are designed to be optically opaque and acoustically transparent. There are currently two projectors, soon to be multiple high-resolution video projectors, mounted around the seam between the two hemispheres, approaching eye-limited resolution on the inner surface. The loudspeaker real-time sound synthesis cluster (around 500 individual speaker elements plus sub-...

Nancy creates visual music works in both BlissPaint and Flash as the artist says, she creates "work that actually could be 'played' in real time if the colors were attached to keys on a musical key board." Her desire is to create an instrument that could play color in time. The key issue for Nancy is to "'tune' the color through several spectra creating a smooth transition from light to dark. I think the color itself will create the 'music' over time- note the shapes of the color, or the way the color moves". Source: Artist website - www.nancyherman.com Nancy has created several of these color in time works and they are available to preview on her website at: http://visualmusic.nancyherman.com/ Link to Satie's Gymnopodies I have been aware of Nancy's work for long time and meant to blog about this ages ago. Very consistent and accurate color in time works, worth checking out.

Came across this amazing video demonstrating a visualising of music created with software. The YouTube video channel belongs to username inwit and there are a few more videos of this visualising of music - incredible stuff.

onedotzero adventures in motion: now open for submissions! SUBMISSION DEADLINE: FRIDAY 29 MAY 2009 "onedotzero_adventures in motion is acclaimed by artists, audiences and creative industry alike for being the world leader in audio-visual arts and entertainments at the forefront of a new experiential festival experience which combines music, film, play, live performance, interactivity, digital arts and culture. onedotzero_adventures in motion festival is now open to receive visually progressive moving image work for their 2009/2010 global touring festival. the festival premier takes place in london at BFI Southbank, 9-13 september 2009, followed by an extensive international tour which kicks off in buenos aires, 25-27 september 2009. " More information on submissions at: http://www.onedotzero.com/submissions

"Ryoichi Kurokawa is a japanese audiovisual artist. His works take on multiple forms such as screening works, recordings, installation and live performance. Kurokawa composes time based sculpture with digital generated materials and field recorded sources, and the minimal and the complexities coexist there. Kurokawa accepts sound and imagery as a unit not as separately, and constructs very exquisite and precise computer based works with the audiovisual language. That shortens mutual distance, the reciprocity and the synchronization of sound and visual composition. He also performed live-visual for musicians such as HUMAN AUDIO SPONGE(ex.YMO: Sketch Show + Ryuichi Sakamoto). In recent years, Kurokawa is invited to numerous noted international festivals and museums in Europe, US and Asia including TATE MODERN[UK], ARS ELECTRONICA[AT], transmediale[DE], Shanghai eARTS[CN], MUTEK[CA], TodaysArt[NL] and SONAR[ES] for exhibition, screening or audiovisual concert, and he continues to be ...

Nihil 12 from _blank on Vimeo . "_blank is an entity null66913 is a place _blank = female subject [error.msg#vibration too abstract to be considered a person] null66913:core { experimentalOBJECTS }" Website: http://null66913.net/about_blank/ Vimeo Channel: http://vimeo.com/user435020/videos Blog:  http://musicavisual.blogspot.com/

morphing from Gwen Vanhee on Vimeo . Geomtrical formes morphing into lines as they age. Cross-media explorations. "Movement, shapes & colors are AS2 (flash) generated, some parameters are controlled by mouse-gestures. The video itself is a compilation of several screen captures, taken while rendering. Audio was added afterwards." Audio: Cinematic Orchestra - All things to all men Vimeo Channel More images The freshness of the colours against the muted background is really quite beautiful. This piece in particular creates wonderful matches with music activity. (Author comment)

"Otolab was founded in 2001 in Milan by an affinity group of musicians, djs, vjs, videoartists, videomakers, web designers, graphic designers and architects joined to go through a common path in the field of the electronic music and audiovisual research. The projects are developed through lab sessions, seminars and live performance according to the principles of brainstorming and mutual support, free circulation of knowledge and experimentation." See the otolab vimeo video channel for examples of their audiovisual works and performances http://www.otolab.net/ http://www.vimeo.com/otolab Selection of audiovisual works project descriptions Op7 otolab, op7 (demo) from otolab on Vimeo . otolab 2007 --audio: sn, dies_, mud, scrub, maikko, tonylight --video: mud, dies_, xo00, peppolasagna, fd, orgone --total time (live): 50,00' "op7 is a live audiovisual performance that develops a new way of reading the concept of the tunnel as a metaphor of the journey and the survey ...

Junk Box Fraud -is an incredible music composition by Irish Composer Donnacha Dennehy for cl, trb, 2 pf, 2 speakers, tape, video [video by Hugh Reynolds and Gerry O'Brien] This video in the vimeo excerpt was performed by Crash Ensemble, Natasha Lohan and Laura Moody at Shindig concert, SS Michael & John, Dublin, 13.10.07 with cameras by Mark Linnane and John Bates. See also:  http://www.crashensemble.com/ http://www.donnachadennehy.com The video was premiered by Crash Ensemble in the Samuel Beckett theatre in 1997, which I saw and credit with my crazy but exciting path into visual music... it was an incredible work and is one my favourite multimedia music compositions - visuals and music.  That particular performance was sheer magic. It was the sheer combination of energies of the singer performances, the energy and speed of the rhythm of the music and the incredible energy and appearance and disappearance of the visuals in the video projection behind the musicians, the impac...

12_Series is a new generative multichannel computer installation by Telcosystems (NL). 12_series - work in progress pt. 2 from Telcosystems. "The installation is an audiovisual horizon comprised of twelve identical image and sound generating machines.   The software for these machines is based on the idea of evolution, implementing forms of audiovisual imitation, mutation and recombination, aiming for the emergence of captivating complexity from a vocabulary of rudimentary shapes, sounds and logic. The system is build around the notion of decentralized autonomous decision making, where each machine displays its own generative behavior, while reacting to behavior of neighboring machines and adapting to centrally organized environmental variables. In this way the installation focuses on the tension between the individual and the group, between the machine specific development and the group dynamics that determine the ever-evolving horizon. Imitation will be used as a way to start c...

I am hoping to better gather together essays and articles on visual music and visual music relevant topics in this blog.  I have only recently realised that blogger provides a tag facility, and so posts can be accessed via the tags.  A few such tags I wish to try to provide more posts for is the tags: essay , article , research , writing .  I have come across a lot of good writing - online or otherwise, so I am probably really doing this for myself, so I can quickly get access to them again.   CVM and iotaCenter  based in Los Angeles, US provide really good resources and links to excellent resources.  Check them out for more up to date and extensive links. If you have a link to an excellent essay, piece of writing or resource, I would love to put it in this blog, if you could email me at mmcd@soundingvisual.com , I would be delighted to hear from you and to share the resource on this blog. Dennis H. Miller  based in Northeastern University, Boston invited me to write an essay on Visu...

PAST EVENT This is a past Visual Music event held in Queensland  Gallery of Modern Art in 2008.  The website documenting the Visual Music program screened is really useful as it provides an excellent overview of historical works in particular with a really useful list of their films, each filmmaker/artist is linked with a page overviewing their work and listing the films screened for the Visual Music program.  The website also provides information on the curators for the event - a really useful resource on Visual Music. (Author comment) Visual Music - 28 March – 1 June 2008  "The cinematic genre of Visual Music draws on elements of form, colour and rhythm in music and images to create visual symphonies. Working with abstraction and figuration, gesture, pitch, beat and palette, filmmakers have explored the dynamism of sight and sound synaesthesia - hearing colour and line, seeing rhythm and tone - through innovative techniques and aesthetics. The Australian Cinémathèque’s Visual Mu...