Visual Music

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 thei…

Visual Music Salon November 18, Los Angeles: A CVM Salon Event, in association with Blindspot Project. Featuring films by Jordan Belson, Joshua Light Show, Mary Ellen Bute, Jules Engel, David Lebrun, Harry Smith, John Stehura, Jud Yalkut, plus contemporary videos by Bret Battey, Scott Draves, Chris Harvey, Christina McPhee, Steve Woloshen and more. 16mm prints and digital, A Visual Music Salon - CVM and Blindspot presented by Cindy Keefer of CVM ; filmmakers Lebrun and Harvey in person. PLUS Live Music by Golden Animals, featuring liquid light show by The Blindspot Project and Joshua Payne Orchestra, featuring live video painting by Ryan Patrick Griffith More information: See Facebook Events Announcement for up to date information https://www.facebook.com/events/1834…

Screengrab of Praxinoscopes webpage:  http://www.dickbalzer.com/Praxinoscopes.599.0.html Richard Balzer has been collecting early optical toys and he and his assistant have digitized many of the discs and outputs from these toys into digital animations, to create a kind of digital museum of historical early moving images. " I have been collecting for more than thirty years, and my collecting wanders around the theme of visual entertainment, and almost all of the collection dates from before 1900. Over time you will find magic lanterns, peepshows, shadows, transparencies, thaumatropes, phenakistascopes and a variety of other optical toys.  " Source:  http://www.dickbalzer.com/ " Nearly five hundred years ago European collectors arranged their pie…

Some excellent resources now available in relation to the early 20th Century Drawn Sound experiments that took place in Russia.  This recent news comes from some very timely facebook posts by the Center for Visual Music. Andrei Smirnov's book 'Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th-century Russia is just recently published and is available in Europe to purchase.  Andrei presented an incredible paper at the recent 'Seeing Sound Symposium', 2011, held in Bath Spa of which I attended and saw and heard the incredible work and experiments presented in relation to this period. " Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th-century Russia Edited by David Rogerson, Matt Price. Foreword by Jeremy …

Sergio Maltagliati CIRCUS 5.1 UNICUM GRAPHICS The images of HomeArt programs by Pietro Grossi, are proposed through software by Sergio Maltagliati. This is a software which generates always different graphical variations.  It is based on HomeArt’s Basic source code.  The music program produces an automatic and generative music,starting from a simple sound cell. Visu@lMusic/HomeArt www.visualmusic.it free video download: http://www.pietrogrossi.org/cerchio4_2_unicum.7z download images: http://www.pietrogrossi.org/Cerchio_4_2%20immagini.7z About "A/V interactive compositions on the NET by Sergio Maltagliati Beginning with netOper@ in 1997, Sergio Maltagliati has created works on the Internet that combine audio and video elements into an intrigui…

OSKAR FISCHINGER: SPACE LIGHT ART—A FILM ENVIRONMENT JUNE 28–OCTOBER 28, 2012 Whitney Museum, Los Angeles "This exhibition presents one of the first multimedia projections ever made—Oskar Fischinger’s Raumlichtkunst (Space Light Art), a recreation of his multiple-screen film events first shown in Germany in 1926, recently restored by the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles. Radical in its format, its multiple screens of abstract shapes, color, and light produced an experience that, in Fischinger’s own description of his work, created “an intoxication by light from a thousand sources.” Source and for more information visit: http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/OskarFischinger Visit Center for Visual Music (CVM) events page for more visual music exhibitio…

Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) Major Painting Exhibition at the Peyton Wright Gallery - Santa Fe, New Mexico Opening July 2011 Oskar Fischinger - Layers of Sound Oskar Fischinger's paintings are being exhibited at the art dealers gallery - Peyton Wright Gallery.  These paintings are a real treat to view.  Peyton Wright Gallery have put many of Oskar Fischinger's paintings online, many of these have probably not been seen before, as they have not been put online before. Some of these paintings have strong musical themes.  There are several that I really like and a beautiful one for me is, Layers of Sound.  However, there are many others and Fischinger's very distinct artistic and aesthetic style is really apparent.  A great treat to be able to view th…

CVM at Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany May 11. For more information on this event, visit http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/stories/storyReader$7532 Cindy Keefer, Director of the Center for Visual Music Los Angeles, will discuss and screen work by pioneers of kinetic art and pre-digital cinema from CVM's archives... Keefer will screen work from CVM's archives including Dockum's “Mobilcolor Projections,” Bute's “Abstronics” (an early oscilloscope film), a short Bute documentary, the Fischinger “Lumigraph Film,” and more. She will discuss CVM's work with the Fischinger legacy, current preservation work, and “Raumlichtkunst,” the new restoration of his 1920s multiple-projector performances. Followed by the screening “Films Sacred …

VISUAL MUSIC PROGRAMME at 18th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film The Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, May 2011 presented a Visual Music supporting programme at the festival. http://www.itfs.de/en/ CVM (Center for Visual Music) presented two historical programs of abstract animated films by Oskar Fischinger, including preserved prints and rarely-screened films. Title of Program: Oskar Fischinger Retrospective , May 7, 2011 Cornelia and Holger Lund presented contemporary visual music Title of Programme: Visual Music: Contemporary , May 8, 2011. A programme was put together on Norman McLaren Title of Programme: The animator as musician , May 6, 2011 See: http://www.itfs.de/en/programmes/supporting-programme/visual-music.h…

Vague Terrain 19: Schematic as Score: Uses and Abuses of the (In)Deterministic Possibilities of Sound Technology. Interesting article on synthesising images and sound and looking back to electronic video and music pioneers to provide a context for more informed contemporary work that synthesise video and sound. View article: http://vagueterrain.net/journal19

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…

Animated Notion - Part 1 http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=13104 The first part of this series by Norman McLaren deals only with tempo. It starts by showing the disc travelling in one move (1/24 of a second) from A to B, and progressively demonstrates slower and slower tempos. 1976 ,  09 min 08 s Directed by Norman McLaren Grant Munro Produced by Norman McLaren Grant Munro More Resources http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/result.php?type=credit&pid=11192&nom=Norman+McLaren Original Post - 31/10/2005 Norman McLaren - Animated Motion Part 1 - Video Clip Real Media See at Amazon PAL non US version Purchase Norman McLaren works at Amazon.com Search Amazon.com for Norman McLaren

texts and publications by Joost Rekveld: updated links to Joost Rekveld Writings Visit website with links to writings: http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld/wp/?page_id=6 Original Post: 25 October 2005 Joost Rekveld - Work and Writings and Historical Articles About "Joost Rekveld (1970) has been making abstract films and light installations since 1991, originally starting out from the idea of a visual music for the eye. He has been making most of his animated films with optical and mechanical setups, using the computer as a controller and composition machine in order to orchestrate the precise movements of optical components. His installation making grew out of the tools he developed to make his films, often inspired by the lesser frequented by-ways in the…

Media Art History This is an excellent resource. Re:Live Media Art History organises a biannual confernence on the histories of media art, science and technology. The website keeps a record of the conferences. The MediaArtHistoriesArchive - documents and hosts a" digital repository of scholarship examining the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology! Our collections are currently being fleshed out and added to. Archive Goals :: world wide access - create a place for classic texts, cross-pollinated, cutting-edge scholarship - items submitted and regulated by authors - rich metadata MAHArchive connects disciplines which devote research efforts to Media Art, from art history, through film, theater, media and cultural studies, to psychology, informati…

Multimedia - From Wagner to Virtual Reality Excellent resource website: http://www.w2vr.com/contents.html "This Website is the interactive companion to the book of the same title, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality. A unique collection of seminal essays, the print edition traces a fertile series of collaborations between the arts and the sciences, going back to the years just after World War II – and even further, to composer Richard Wagner, whose ideas about the immersive nature of music theater foreshadowed the experience of virtual reality. Among the essential articles gathered here are the Futurists' 1916 manifesto on cinema, which declared that the new medium would unite all media and replace the book; Vannevar Bush's 1945 Atlantic Mon…

Website about Thomas Wilfred - light art Thomas Wilfred [Danish-American; 1889 - 1968] was a pioneer in developing what he called Lumia, the art of light. "A Wilfred Lumia work is a composition of light, color, and form which changes slowly with time. It exhibits a very wide range of light intensity and a broad spectrum of delicate colors and shapes. These are extremely difficult to record and impossible to "play back" with fidelity, even using a high quality monitor. Thus you cannot experience the full, almost visceral, impact of his work unless you see it in person. Unfortunately, there are only approximately 35 of his works in existence and these are rarely displayed publicly. So here we attempt to convey, however feebly, some "feel" for the…