Visual Music

The Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices book edited by Andrew Knight-Hill is available to pre-order on the Routledge website and on Amazon.  It is available in April.  A Focal Press/Routledge publication and part of the Sound Design Series. Publisher's Description  Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices brings together international artist scholars to explore diverse sound and image practices, applying critical perspectives to interrogate and evaluate both the aesthetics and practices that underpin the audiovisual. Contributions draw upon established discourses in electroacoustic music, media art history, film studies, critical theory and dance; framing and critiquing these arguments within the context of diverse audiovisual practices. The volume’s interdisciplinary perspective contributes to the rich and evolving dialogue surrounding the audiovisual, demonstrating the value and significance of practice informed theory, and theory derived from pra...

Boogie Stomp Pink I saw this gem of a work at the Sound / Image 2019 Symposium at University of Greenwich, London in November 2019 and loved it.  It was presented in the installation and in a screening.  It is the work of Independent artist Stuart Pound who lives in London and has worked in film, digital video, sound and the visual arts since the early 1970’s. Stuart's film work is quite incredible and can be seen on his vimeo channel.  He collaborates with the poet Rosemary Norman. "This boogie dance performed by William & Maeva was downloaded from the internet. Vertical sections taken from each frame are arranged into 24 panels to show pattern and movement across every second of it. First shown at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in Sept 2017." Boogie Stomp Pink from Stuart Pound on Vimeo . View more of Stuart Pounds work on vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/stuartpound Sound/ Image 2019 Symposium, University of Greenwich https://blogs.gre.ac....

Stages by Paul Klooren I saw this recently at the Sound Image 2019 Symposium held at the University of Greenwich.  I really enjoyed the mixture of natural images and animated drawn visual elements and the use of stillness and motion. It felt like a very dramatic work.  All the sounds originate from a guitar. Klooren is currently studying audiovisual composition in the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and works mainly with filmed footage and animation. Stages View more works by Paul at his youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8OT3olRdwnawKdUsVCmKXw

About In Situ EnsembIe "The In Situ Ensemble is comprised of three performer-composers: Michael Janz on synthesizers, Ian Stahl on guitar, vocals, and electronics, and Anthony Storniolo on percussion and live video synthesis. They create site-inspired audiovisual performances by blending electroacoustic free improvisations with audio and video recordings gathered from the surroundings of where the performance will take place. Their work uses documentation as a catalyst for improvisation; field recordings and video recordings become source materials that are then translated and manipulated, recontextualizing our preconceived notions of the sonic and visual objects. Musically, the trio draws upon a diverse soundscape that ranges from quiet minimalism to complex textures and loud, distorted noise." In Situ are interested in blending audio and visual improvisation and have developed a system that incorporates analog video synthesizers that have microphones built in,...

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 information on the CVM Patreon website and to join to get exclusive content visit:  https://www.patreon.com/CenterforVisualMusic/overview

BFI - restoration from archive. "Missing for over 80 years, this experimental film by Bauhaus teacher and artist László Moholy-Nagy was found by BFI curators embedded in a reel of film that also contained Oskar Fischinger's Early Experiments in Hand Drawn Sound. László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) was a tenacious, restless creative who associated with various early twentieth century vanguard art movements. Teaching at the legendary Bauhaus school, which this year sees its centenary, his early optical sound films experimented with the formal properties of film and blurred the lines between sound and image and the act of hearing and seeing sound. Newly scanned at 4K, the restoration of ABC in Sound / Tönendes ABC will receive its world premiere at BFI Southbank on 18 June." Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui_FU-KAZMM

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...