Visual Music

SoundImageSound 10 ~ Festival of New Music and Visual Image January 30/31, 2014 Conservatory of Music ~ University of the Pacific ~ Stockton, California Call for Works: This year SoundImageSound celebrates its tenth season with presentations of works by artists who bridge sound and visual image in the creation of compositions sometimes referred to as visual music or intermedia. The festival again hosts an open submission process for new works by artists from around the globe. In honor of its tenth season, SoundImageSound welcomes guest artist Jaroslaw Kapuscinski to the festival. Composer, performer, and intermedia artist, Kapuscinski is on the faculty of Stanford University where he directs the Intermedia Lab at CCRMA. During the festival he will speak about the creation of Linked Verse, an evening-length work that fuses sound and image. Its music is a concerto for cello, Japanese shō, and spatialized sound while its visual landscape is a live rendering of 3D projections ...

Exhibition Reflections from Damaged Life. An exhibition on psychedelia at Raven Row, London Exhibition tour with Lars Bang Larsen Thursday 31 October, 6.30pm Lars Bang Larsen will lead a tour of the exhibition Reflections from Damaged Life. An exhibition on psychedelia in conversation with Alex Sainsbury. This event is free but booking is essential as space is very limited. Please email info@ravenrow.org to reserve a place. Reflections from Damaged Life. An exhibition on psychedelia Exhibition continues until 15 December 2013 To many artists in the sixties who referred to the counterculture, or who used hallucinogenic drugs as an artistic tool, the term ‘psychedelic’ was seen as compromised and the idea of a ‘psychedelic art’ resisted. It is for this reason that ‘psychedelic art’ cannot be easily categorised as a genre; neither can it be understood as an entirely overlooked art form. This exhibition sets out to question what ‘psychedelic art’ might be, and reassess t...

The online article "A Brief History of Optical Synthesis" was written by Derek Holzer in 2007 as part of his Tonewheels project exploring optical sound and colour music. This web article became the basis of a lecture that Derek gives on optical sound and graphical composition. Quote from introduction "The technology of synthesizing sound from light is a curious combination of research from the realms of mathematics, physics, electronics and communications theory which found realization in the industries of motion picture films, music, surveillance technology and finally digital communications. As such, it's history is an interesting cross section of 20th century history, reaching from the euphoria of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century inventors (who often struggled between "scientific" and "supernatural" explainations of their work) through the paradigm-smashing experiments of the Soviet avant-garde in the 1920's and 1930...

Vibeke Sorensen's Visual Music Installation, Illuminations is being presented as part of the ART section of the 3-D Festival Beyond at Karlsruhe, Germany from 03 October to 06 October, 2013. The installation was also held at the International Visual Music Symposium of the Center for Asian Art & Design, (CAAD) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, October 12 - 14, 2012.  I attended the installation in Singapore, and it quite stunning.  The screens are presented at angles in a darkened room and the imagery is luminous and colourful.  The interaction between the imagery on each screen is analagous to a visual music. Illuminations Installation Description on the Festival Website "ILLUMINATIONS is a real-time computer generated visual music installation that employs 12 6 x 8 foot screens, 12 computers and projectors, a multichannel sound system, and a large mirror. A stereoscopic version of this piece requires 3D projectors. The music, animation, inst...

Press Release from the Punto Y Riya Festival and CALL FOR WORKS As you probably know,  Punto y Raya  &  Reykjavík Center for Visual Music  have joined to produce the greatest event in the history of abstract visual music and live cinema: the  Reykjavík Visual Music  -  Punto y Raya Festival 2014 , which will take place  from  January 30 th to  February 2 nd   2014  at  HARPA  Concert Hall (Iceland).  The deadline for the  CALLS FOR ENTRIES  is  October 28th 2013 , and it's approaching fast! There is no entry fee and the films & live set demos are submitted online through our website.  www.puntoyrayafestival.com ::   SHORT FILM  CALL FOR ENTRIES Open to abstract films experimenting with  dots & lines  and avoiding representation.  All techniques are welcome; the soundtrack  cannot feature articulated words  and the maximum running ti...

Image( c) Center for Visual Music. Kreise (Circles), 1933-34 by Oskar Fischinger LECTURE  Preserving Visual Music: The Archives of Center for Visual Music Next Wednesday (October 2nd, 2013 at 1.00 pm in the ATRL ( ATRL.ie ), Dublin, Trinity College Dublin. Cindy Keefer, the director of the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles, will be discussing and screening selections from the CVM archive. For those interested in visual music, abstract cinema, expanded cinema, experimental film, this is a must hear and see talk and a great opportunity to hear about the preservation and archiving work of the CVM and an opportunity to meet its director in person. Keefer has co-edited a recently published book on Oskar Fischinger, Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967): Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction, distributed by Thames & Hudson. " Cindy Keefer , archivist and curator, will discuss and screen work by pioneers of kinetic art and visual music from Center for Visual Music’s (CVM) archives....

Fractal is a contemporary music production company set up by Anna Murray and Philip Lawson. It aims to create new contexts for contemporary music through informal settings and collaboration with other media. We are dedicated to new Irish music, programming full concerts of works by Irish composers, including specially commissioned music. Fractal have put on a number of music concert events that included a visual element, some of these have been in a music performance setting, where visual artists worked on creating visuals for existing music compositions (or did both for the case of a music composer creating their own visuals).   Their first concert was for the Dublin Culture Night in 2012, this concert also toured Dublin, Mayo and Cork. Visit  https://www.facebook.com/FractalMusicDublin for more information and  http://fractalmusicdublin.wordpress.com/ Synthesis Two innovative programmes have been curated in partnership with the IFI (Irish F...

Found: new restorations and discoveries from Center for Visual Music Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium Thursday 26 September 2013, 19.00 – 21.00 £5, concessions available. "This selection explores lost, legendary and rare treasures found in the archives of Center for Visual Music (CVM). Featuring rare works by Jordan Belson, including two unreleased films, the unfinishedQuartet and the premiere of the restoration of the infamous LSD, plus a reel from the legendary San Francisco Vortex Concerts (1957–9), and the rarely screened Bopscotch...The programme, featuring many new preserved 16 mm and 35 mm prints, is introduced by archivist/curator Cindy Keefer of CVM." Visit Tate Modern web page for more information www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/film/found-new-restorations-and-discoveries-center-visual-music

A very interesting project consisting of experiments, exhibitions and research in a new medium in audio-visual screenless animation: The Diasynchronoscope  proejct is really a very exciting find, and really worth checking out. The artists and researchers from TROPE (Joint artistic partnership of Carol and Bruno, co-creators of the Diasynchronoscope) are the creators of this new medium. What the medium consists of is a series of physical objects are positioned in space according to Gestalt and animation principles and then animated with synchronized sound using projection mapping technologies. The artists and researchers consider that this might be called ‘concrete animation’. Because the Diasynchronoscope is a screen-less medium‚ videos do notreplicate the experience. If you are interested in experiencing the Diasynchronoscope‚ please contact then and they will either invite you to their studio in New Cross (South London) or to their next show . Quoting from their...

Seeing Sound 3 is now open for submissions - call for works, and papers and in particular live performance works.   DEADLINE for submissions is 27th SEPTEMBE R.  Symposium takes place on 23/24 November, 2013 at Bath Spa University. Practice-Led Research Symposium, Bath Spa University "Seeing Sound is an informal practice-led symposium exploring multimedia work which foregrounds the relationship between sound and image." "It explores areas such as visual music, abstract cinema, experimental animation, audiovisual performance and installation practice through paper sessions, screenings, performances and installations." "This year’s event will have a focus on live performance, but as in previous years, Seeing Sound will also be open to works which fall outside of this focus but within the broader remit of the Seeing Sound series. Submissions should be sited in areas of (audio)visual music, videomusic and other areas of sound-led multimedia practice, ...

Featured on the amazing website - Creative Applications Net (CAN) http://www.creativeapplications.net/sound/dedalo-an-instrument-by-quayola-sinigaglia-to-see-the-sound/ Dedalo - An instrument by Quayola & Natan Sinigaglia to 'see' the sound "Developed as a collaboration between Quayola & Sinigaglia, Dedalo is a collection of custom developed vvvv engines (and a toolkit) to generate, exchange and map data between a series of graphics modules and a rendering engine used for live performance and audiovisual concerts... The project began as a collaboration in 2010 with the development of software called  Partitura . The aim was to create an instrument for performance that would allow visualisation of sound in realtime... Dedalo is built using vvvv together with custom specific addons and plugins. All of the graphics are generated in the GPU via DirectX11 and the system works across two separate machines over a network (the manager and therenderer) with...

The 'I Hear a New World' Visual Music Exhibition ends on the 31st August, 2013 Visit: http://ihearanewworldexhibition.blogspot.ie/ for more details of the visual music works being exhibited at the Luan Gallery, Athlone, Co. Westmeath, Ireland http://ihearanewworldexhibition.blogspot.ie/ "I Hear A New World is a dynamic Visual Music exhibition taking place in Athlone's Luan Gallery from July 11th - August 31st 2013. It features work by leading Irish and international artists, composers and film makers and offers gallery-goers a unique opportunity to immerse themselves within this exciting and innovative art form. I Hear A New World is curated by artists Mike Glennon and Anthony Wigglesworth" Both Mike and Anthony are talented composers/musicians/artists and are recent visual music students of mine (graduates 2013) and many of the works aslo shown consists mainly of visual music works created by past visual music students of mine and graduates of the mus...

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 Deller. Text by Andrei Smirnov. Sound in Z supplies the astounding and long-lost chapter in the early story of electronic music: the Soviet experiment, a chapter that runs from 1917 to the late 1930s. Its heroes are Arse...

Important Exhibition on the Works of Oskar Fischinger  co-organized by the Center for Visual Music Source Link 16th December, 2012, 14.00pm Two Events Performance by Barbara Fischinger , on Oskar Fischinger's Lumigraph Oskar Fischinger Retrospective - Program Two : Rare Works - Screening of Rare Works by Oskar Fischinger (60 min) EYE Film Institute , Amsterdam A very special event, a rarely performed: Lumigraph performance by Barbara Fischinger, assisted by Cindy Keefer at the EYE Film Institute, Amsterdam, before a screening of Oskar Fischinger's rarely seen works, Retrospective - Program Two: Rare Works (compilation ) More information about the Lumigraph Performance http://eyefilm.nl/sites/default/files/Dancing%20With%20Your%20Hands.pdf More information on Oskar Fischinger Retro - Program Two: Rare Works (compilation ) http://www.eyefilm.nl/en/oskar-fischinger-retro-program-two-rare-works?show_id=635365 Oskar Fischinger Retrospective - Program Two: ...

Source: Oskar Fischinger's Raumlichtkunst, CVM page Oskar Fischinger's Raumlichtkunst , a new recreation by the Center for Visual Music of Oskar Fischinger's 1920s multiple-projector performance is installed in a number of museums. It is installed in Tate Modern, London on the 5th Floor, Collection Displays until 17th May 2013 - so if you get a chance do go and see. Tate Modern , London, through May 17, 2013, 5th Floor, Collection Displays I have seen this installation in Tate Modern and was lucky to be at its opening.  The interplay of Fischinger's visuals across the three screens is a real visual music feast.  The quality of the images were really beautiful as well as the presentation and very large scale installation.  The installation has its own  dedicated dark room space.  Quite wonderful to see the work of such a pivotal, historical pioneer of visual music in Tate Modern It was also installed in The Whitney Museum, New York from J...

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.curatingthemovi...

"This work is the result of a chance meeting between two studies: one sound: a study by Pierre Schaeffer , the other visual: sequences shot by the artist Raymond Hains with fluted lens whose movements multiply and colorful animated graphics." google translate from website link below Link: http://www.ina.fr/fresques/artsonores/fiche-media/InaGrm00201/etude-aux-allures.html Article: Aural Vision and Non-Sense – A certain cinema… that one could call concrete on Curating the Moving Image Blog and article post A concrete cinema link

Mark Rowan-Hull - Performance Painting Mark explores 'the invigorating ephemeral qualities of visual art and the encapsulating of time in Music via performance'.  He creates and performs painting responding to music.   "In order to publicise his ideas of visualising music Mark embarked on a series of exciting performances and events involving painting live on stage responding to music by composers such as Messiaen, Scriabin, Debussy, Shostakovich and George Crumb together with Jazz and improvisation. These performances took place in a wide variety of settings including the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Festival Hall, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz club. source:  http://www.rowan-hull.com/biography/ Website:  http://www.rowan-hull.com/ Vimeo:  https://vimeo.com/rowanhull Performance at South Bank Centre, November 2011 https://vimeo.com/42782825

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU HEAR Lis Rhodes recent work, Light Music is installed in Tate Modern, London, Uk from 18th July - 28th October, 2012. " Light Music  is an innovative work presented originally as a performance that experiments with celluloid and sound to push the formal, spatial and performative boundaries of cinema. An iconic work of expanded cinema, it creates a more central and participatory role for the viewer within a dynamic, immersive environment... Light Music  is Rhodes’s response to what she perceived as the lack of attention paid to women composers in European music. She composed a ‘score’ comprised of drawings that form abstract patterns of black and white lines onscreen. The drawings are printed onto the optical edge of the filmstrip. As the bands of light and dark pass through the projector they are ‘read’ as audio, creating an intense soundtrack, forming a direct, indexical relationship between the sonic and the visual. What one hears is the aura...

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 intriguing interactive Internet experience. As far as a formal education, Maltagliati studied music at the Conservatory “Luigi Cherubini” in Florence, Italy. Shortly after he finished his education at the Conservatory he bega...

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 exhibitions and events http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Events.htm

David West's very beautiful piece exploring that luminous quality of light and colour. "Samadhi is a visual music work that is a tribute to the films of computer graphic pioneers, John and James Whitney. The term 'samadhi' is a Sanskrit term for a higher level of awareness. The graphics were produced in Autodesk Maya using fluids and particles." The soundtrack is called 'Evolution' by Absorption http://youtu.be/2yppl2T1Djs Youtube embed

Ryoichi Kurokawa - rheo: 5 horizons on vimeo http://vimeo.com/31319154 I previously posted an excerpt from the stunning rheo: 5 from the youtube website.  Ryoichi Kurokawa's vimeo channel is worth checking out and the wonderful rheo: 5 is on that. This is a beautiful work, and there is something about odd numbers.  The arrangement into 5 screens is really interesting, it reminds me also of the earlier work Roy Lichtenstein's Three Landscapes - again an arrangement of an odd number of screens, this time 3, it also deals with horizon. I did a short blog post on my other blog - sounding visual blog on Roy Lichtenstein's Three Landscapes, recently reshown. see: http://soundingvisual.blogspot.com/2012/01/roy-lichtensteins-three-landscapes.html Excerpt Ryoichi Kurokawa - rheo: 5 horizons "Audiovisual installation2010 5 HD displays | 5ch multi sound Duration: 08'00" Loop" rheo: 5 horizons from RYOICHI KUROKAWA on Vimeo . Website: http://www...

Jean Detheux - "...lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings..." what a great title - posting latest news on Jean Detheux's visual music work "...lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings..." is a film in 6 movements, based on related texts of E. E. Cummings that focus on themes of nature and the cycle of life. The sonic material, created by Mikel Kuehn mikelkuehn.com/, is derived from manipulated environmental sounds and the recitation of Cummings texts by soprano Deborah Norin-Kuehn. The images were created first (the idea was to create a life in 4 parts, followed by a "recollection" of that life, as if at the moment of death, in the 5th and final movement). The sonic material came later and added an in-between part, visually blank, thus bringing the total to 6 movements." [The work with be presented at The Thirteenth Biennial Symposium on Arts and Technology at Symposium 2012 Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology, 270 Mohegan Avenue, New Lon...

Jt Root, music-visualist and VJ known as Aeonchild, works out of Boulder, Colorado as a Production Designer and Live VJ Performer. Recently has created a visualist piece - The Aeonchild Visualist Project, a commissioned work by Ballet Nouveau Colorado's production of "Love in the Digital Age". source:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeonchild/6820176415/in/photostream I am very taken with the term 'visualist' or 'music-visualist' that Aeonchild uses to describe his process of interpreting music, here is a quote from his website explaining this term. "Aeonchild’s work re-interprets music into a visual language, spinning cosmic messages with symmetrical precision. Through the use of motion graphics, video, light and color, he mixes futuristic visions with ancient symbols of sacred geometry. The result is a visceral experience that fuses sight and sound while teasing the senses with visible rhythms." Source:  http://aeonchild.com/about/ ...