Visual Music

The Center for Visual Music ( CVM ) has set up a a library, gallery and archive of the history of Visual Music at Patreon. Become a member at a range of prices to access exclusive content of relevance to the history and contemporary practice of visual music. More info on CVM's collection "has the world’s largest collection of Visual Music-related materials. The collections include papers, films and artwork by Oskar Fischinger; the original research collection of animation historian Dr. William Moritz, and collections covering the history of Visual Music: artists, exhibitions, theories, color organs, vintage instruments, Expanded Cinema, performances, historic events, 1960s psychedelic light shows and more." [ source ] For more inform…

s+v+m Blog - Resource for sounds-visual-movement Rodrigo Carvalho Excellent resource in this blog by Rodrigo Carvalho of VISIOPHONE. In particular Carvalho uses the blog to keep a notebook on sounds-visual-movement topics (like a sister of this blog!) Really great articles on live performance work. To quote: "This blog intends to work as notebook for my research on synergies between Sound-Visuals-Movement, audiovisual interactive systems, augmented realities, graphic representations of sound and movement in real time, hypersensory immersive media and synaesthesia states." His recent post on graphic sound visualisers is just brilliant (courtesy of a facebook post one of the leaders in the field of live audio-visual performance, Max Hattler ) …

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 …

Advanced Beauty - 18 Sound Sculptors - 2009 Curated by Universal Everything Soundtracks by Freefarm A DVD was created and there are links to purchase the DVD on their website. The website created to support the collection is excellent with links to the artists whose work is documented online, with video clips online on their website and on their vimeo channel, so all can be seen online which is a great resource. "Advanced Beauty is an ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound, an ever-growing collaboration between programmers, artists, musicians, animators and architects. The first collection is a series of audio-reactive 'video sound sculptures'. Inspired by synasthesia, the rare, sensory experience of seeing sound or …

Filter Magazine Issue 66 / Synchresis Explored: Australian Sound Artists working at the spontaneous weld between sounds and image. December 2007. http://filter.anat.org.au/category/issue-66/ Articles: Monster and Maps by Mitchell Whitelaw Synchresis DVD "The Synchresis DVD, curated by Mitchell Whitelaw brought together ten Australian sound artists: Gordon Monro , Wade Marynowsky , Peter Newman , Jean Poole , BotBorg, Julian Oliver & Steven Pickles, Robin Fox, Andrew Gadow and Abject Leader. 3000 copies were circulated in Filter Issue 66 nationally and internationally and the DVD was launched at the Chauvel Cinema Sydney with live performances by Robin Fox, Peter Newman and Ian Andrews." http://www.anat.org.au/2010/06/synchresis/ …

The Center for Visual Music has set up a vimeo channel to show excerpts from Films from the Collection of Center for Visual Music archive. Many have been preserved by CVM and/or curated by CVM in programs seen worldwide. http://vimeo.com/channels/124018 This channel is an excellent resource for those wishing to see excerpts from the CVM collection archive and is worth keeping a regular check as more films are added to the channel. It is just wonderful to see William Moritz discuss Oskar Fischinger's work, to see the Lumigraph Film (c. 1969) by Elfriede Fischinger (excerpt). This is a very valuable vimeo channel for fans and scholars of visual music. Center for Visual Music - Vimeo Channel www.centerforvisualmusic.org

The Visual Music Archive has been set up by Heike Sperling . This is an excellent online resource for all that is happening in visual music and would be worth bookmarking and coming back to regularly. The layout is really easy to use and follow and this is an exciting resource, that I will definitely be keeping in touch with regularly. Visual Music Archive Heike makes the very interesting points about archiving practice via online means. "Since the Visual Music Archive is not a blog it accumulates slowly and steadily, and shall continue to far into the future. To seek completeness in the field of fine arts seems rather eerie. A wunderkammer, on the other hand, is far more interesting, challenging, and provides inspiring impulses. As a library's in…

I have only recently got round to compiling some of the books I have checked out (and would like to check out) when researching topics for visual music.  There are also some great DVDs worth getting.  These resources I have compiled into an amazon a store - at present it links to books on the amazon.co.uk website, but I will be also creating a similar one to link to amazon.com These resources are not all exactly visual music resources, but they are definitely helpful in any kind of visual music investigations or research or in the broader area of audio visual composition/installation/interaction I have signed up with Amazons affiliate programme, so every link you click from my store and then go onto purchase I get a small percentage.  I am slightly monetising my bl…

A lecture on the art of algorithm in the moving image. 'The lecture demonstrates, by means of practical examples, the use of algorithmic relationship in the art of moving images, from films and early generative art to contemporary digital techniques... The lecture will include the projection of films by Peter Kubelka, Kurt Kren, James Whitney, Larry Cuba, Dan Sandin and Granular Synthesis.' visit website

EraSer + vj Ape5 are an audiovisual and experimental project from Italy. More on ape 5 Ape5 is active since 2001 both as a VJ and video-artist, basing his performances on the research and experimentation of real-time video, interested in the interaction between arts and video and in the experimentation of glitch aesthetisc of the sound. In 2005, he established vidauxs.net on the the first net labels that focus on real-time audio-video interaction. Lately he is into building audio-video controller that use open-source hardware See: http://www.ape5.it/ More on EraSer Matteo de Ruggieri using the pseudonym of EraSer has given birth to his own electronic experimental project through the art of circuit bending, exclusively playing with toys and musical instruments transf…

Practice-led Visual Music Research Symposium, Bath Spa University, 19/20th Sept 2009 "Bath Spa University’s Center for Musical Research hosts an informal two-day symposium exploring a broad range of multimedia work highlighting the relationship between sound and image. Areas such as visual music, abstract cinema, experimental animation, lumia, cymatics, live audiovisual performance and relevant installation work will be examined and explored." http://seeingsound.co.uk The excellent programme organised by Dr Joe Hyde consisted of papers/presentations , performances and screenings . The mix of screenings, talks, papers and performances made this a really rich event and a wonderful opportunity to see and hear the work that is being created now in the are…

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 pu…

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 …

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 Pra…

"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…

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

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 …

"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…

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 y…