Skip to main content

A Concrete Cinema?

A Concrete Cinema? one of several articles and presentations by Christian Gosvig Olesen on the Curating the Moving Image Blog. Christian has researched this area with great thoroughness and his articles are an excellent resource for those tracking the history of visual music and audiovisual work where there one of its main focuses is on music. In contemporary audiovisual practice, visuals are presented with electroacoustic music and in particular there are many contemporary flavours of music concrete music being used alongside a visual equivalent - a moving image concrete. Concrete cinema is a most apt term here as used by Christian in his articles. He traces the connections with Pierre Schaeffer, whom used the term cinéma concret to describe the intention to work with cinema and music where the cinema is 'A visual counterpoint to what he, together with fellow composer Pierre Henry, had conceived as musique concrète in the late 1940′s." [Source: http://2011.curatingthemovingimage.org/blog/2011/03/16/3075/ ]


Website links:
Articles and posts by Christian Gosvig Olesen
A Concrete Cinema? link
Schaeffer on media research within the O.R.T.F. link
Aural Vision and Non-Sense – A certain cinema… that one could call concrete link
Concrete Cinema – Moodboard + Sketches link
Concrete cinema – Visual Exploration link
A brief note on the term “Concrete cinema” link
A Sketch for a retrospective of Concrete cinema link
Christian's workplan link

Popular posts from this blog

International Call for Works - VISUAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

I am very happy to announce the call for works for visual music films for a visual music festival devoted to contemporary practice to be held at the University of Kentucky, US. Why I am very proud is one of my former students is involved in organising this, well done Kristine  SCFA Visual Music Festival 2025 @ The University of Kentucky Call for visual music films, Deadline is 15th December 2024 General Rules: • The films must be made entirely with abstract imagery, avoiding representation. That is: no cars, no people, no landscapes, no texts, etc. • You can use any technique you’d like: drawing, video composition, cgi, scratch, op-art, stop-motion, camera-less… • The soundtrack cannot feature any words, in any language. If you’re using a song, this must be instrumental or feature non-narrative voices, (no lyrics). • Maximum running time is 8 minutes. • Open and/or closing credits are welcome. • Films must have been produced after 2017. • We kindly request authors to enter their fi...

Contact - Augmented Acoustics

Felix Faire (UK), a Parametric System Designer had designed some very interesting interactive installations. One of these, Contact is an interface with which to manipulate and visualize sounds. Beautiful results. View Contact: Augmented Acoustics CONTACT: Augmented Acoustics from Felix Faire on Vimeo . "CONTACT is a tangible audio interface to manipulate and visualize sounds generated from interaction with a simple wooden surface. Any physical contact with the table generates acoustic vibrations which are manipulated and visualized LIVE as they occur using several communicating pieces of software. All code will be opensource and available on github. Bartlett School of Architecture Msc AAC Tutor: Ruairi Glynn" More information: http://www.coroflot.com/felixfaire/profile Vimeo Channel: https://vimeo.com/felixfaire

D.D. Jameson - Colour Music (1844)

D.D. Jameson devised a systematic approach to create a colour music score for a specially adapted piano. His scores took the information from a piano music score and applied it to a sound-music colour scheme and translated it into a colour score. The colour score communicated the musical information - such as notes, rhythm, durations. His score was to link to a special adaptation of a piano music instrument that would have the keys prepared with the relevant colours. The musician could then play the piano by following the colour music score.  Not only were the piano keys to be coloured according to his colour to tone analogy system but the score was to also communicate other aspects of the musicianship such as: the intervals of the music, the notes and their octaves, by mapping the height of the colour to the octave of the note and the width of the colour to the duration of the note. "A pianoforte having been prepared in the manner described, any air may be slo...