Artists' Television Access

Contemporary Visual Music

Friday, September 7, 2012, 8:00 pm, $6-$10

“Visual music” is an umbrella term for all kinds of things: music with a colour organ or oscilloscope techniques, expanded cinema or animated films. This diversity has been further extended by developments in digital technology. However the common denominator for all of the different techniques and formats is an evenly balanced combination of visual and acoustic elements. The “Contemporary Visual Music” programme demonstrates this diversity. The interface with the music video – a format which often uses stylistic devices originating in visual music – is open.

The screening explores the various facets of the phenomenon: some developments clearly have to be considered in the context of postdigital tendencies such as the allusion to pre-cinematographic techniques in the videos by Kronenberg/Schreiber, Westerberg und Wilson. Apart from these tendencies, we can still observe a frequent use of techniques that have been developed mostly in the context of VJing. Gozel Radio an iEditStuff, for example, are working with sampling while Pleix and A-li-ce employ iterative image processing. VJing itself has become much more performative over the last few years including live music or performative action on stage, as the example of the videos transforma, Kostüm Total and Raquel Meyers show. While all these tendencies rely more or less on figurative images, the tradition of the abstract experiments in visual music from the 1920s find a continuation in abstract videos that try to work on structural correspondences between image and sound such as David Muth’s “Aleph-1 01”.

 

Film List:

 

Transforma, „Bang Out“, DE, 2009, 3:50

Kostüm Total (Peter Holl und Alexander Györfi), „Teil 1: Geometrie“, DE, 2008, 4:38

David Wilson, „We got time“, Music: Moray McLaren, GB, 2009, 3:45

Yanni Kronenberg, Lucinda Schreiber, „Autumn Story“,GB, 2009, 3:28

iEditStuff, „Nothing to You“, US, 2007, 4:18

Gozel Radio, „Isyanbul“, TR, 2009, 3:27

Mikomikona, „100 Years“, DE, 2003, 3:00

David Muth, „Aleph-1 01“, AT, 2010, 8:00

Willie Dorner und Michael Palm, „Body Trail CCTV“, AT, 2009, 8:00

A-LI-CE, „VJ-Gum Set“, FR, 2009, 6:07

Raquel Meyers, „The Droidduck“, ES, 2010, 3:24

Sif Itona Westerberg, „NO VIP“, GB, 2008, 3:45

Pleix/Blink, „Birds“, FR, 2006, 3:04

Transforma, „Operators“, DE, 2009, 3:06

Curated by Cornelia and Holger Lund (in person), www.fluctuating-images.de

A programme curated for the Festival of Animated Film 2011, Stuttgart

 


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