Summer School Masterclass: Visual Music Collaborative Report

A very interesting workshop on visual music took place July 19 - July 23 2010 at Eyebeam, New York.

Summer School Masterclass: Visual Music Collaborative

Visual Music Collaborative Workshop - July 2010, New York
http://visualmusic.tumblr.com/workshop

It was "led by Eyebeam Fellow Aaron Meyers, in collaboration with Re:Group artist, Aaron Koblin and in creative partnership with Ghostly International...Up to 11 participants will be invited to explore the relationship between music, sound, and dynamically generated imagery and motion. Topics will include sound-analysis techniques, advanced OpenGL programming, and interfacing with mobile control devices. Guest speakers and musicians provide additional insight. The master class culminates in an event where participants perform using work created during the week."
More information on the press release
http://eyebeam.org/events/summer-school-masterclass-visual-music-collaborative

More links
http://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/visual-music-collaborative-events/
http://visualmusic.tumblr.com/workshop

The workshop had a ompetitive application process. Applicants had to be at least at the graduate level of study, or have an emerging creative practice, and have established experience using OpenFrameworks, Processing, or an equivalent programming tool. Hence the imagery that has come from this work shop is based on programming processes.

Participants: http://visualmusic.tumblr.com/participants

VISUAL MUSIC BLOG AND VIDEO ARCHIVE
http://visualmusic.tumblr.com/
A really excellent blog resource for contemporary practice on visual music, is the support blog for the event, set up to document and provide information that came from the workshop. The authors of the blog urge those interested in visual music to:
Check here often for inspirational visual music material and updates leading up to the workshop.
Archive: http://visualmusic.tumblr.com/archive

Visual Music Archive
http://visualmusic.tumblr.com/archive

 Visual Music Collaborative [Events] – Results

A webpage at www.creativeapplications.net has a written a results report, on the collection of work produced at the recent Visual Music Collaborative workshop hosted by Eyebeam this July in NYC.
http://www.creativeapplications.net/maxmsp/visual-music-collaborative-events-results/

See also: Eyebeam Flickr Stream

Example of Video from workshop

Lars Berg  - The illusionist


the Illusionist from Lars Berg on Vimeo.

Center for Visual Music - VIMEO CHANNEL

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

Visual Music Archive

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 inner sanctum."
Source: http://www.heikesperling.de/visualmusic.0.html

There are really useful categories from which to browse the archive.
Latest Editions
Artists
Works
Reading

Visit
http://visualmusicarchive.org/

Call for Works - Really Useful Resource

The website netEX - networked experience has a really useful resource page that list forthcoming calls for works that would be relevant in particular to those who create visual music and audio visual work.

The page is called "calls and deadlines" and is worth checking into every now and then for opportunities to get your work shown.

http://www.nmartproject.net/netex/

Collection of Visual Music Resources - Amazon

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 blog to help pay for the time I spend putting work here, so thanks in advance if you purchase from my astore link to amazon programme.

Link to my compiled resources for Visual Music Research
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/maumcd-21

Iotacenter - Site of the Week - November 30th - 2009

The iotacenter are doing a very cool thing on their site - each week, they select a clip of the week, site of the week and artist of the week.

Thanks to Derek Haugen of Iotacenter for selecting this Visual Music Blog as site of the week on November 30th.



Visit: - iota at: http://www.iotacenter.org/

Available at Amazon
Visual Music from Iota: An Anthology of Contemporary Art, Vol. 1 (2006)

Vimeo Video Channels

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 publication, bringing together interviews, reviews and portfolios of the best in contemporary motion design. This channel acts as a means to showcase work we are watching at Designflux as well as to publish special information on up and coming issues. More info at www.designflux.com"

Check out also http://vimeo.com/videomusical - suggested by Gabriel Shalom

Ron Pellegrino - EMERGENT MUSIC AND VISUAL MUSIC: INSIDE STUDIES

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 resources from Ron Pellegrino that should be of interest to music visualizers:

Just released on Amazon.com  and now available are 

EMERGENT MUSIC AND VISUAL MUSIC: INSIDE STUDIES

Part 1: The Book Part 2; The DVDs
a project of electronic arts pioneer, Ron Pellegrino.
To learn more about the project go to the following URL - http://www.ronpellegrinoselectronicartsproductions.org/Pages/OhNineSiteExtension/Introduction.html or copy "EMERGENT MUSIC AND VISUAL MUSIC: INSIDE STUDIES" into Amazon.com's search field.




VISUAL MUSIC SYNTHESIS SYSTEM

eBay Auction Materials for a Sonic and Visual Music Synthesizer - Synthi AKS and Laser Animator

Also, a unique visual music synthesis system is on the auction block at eBay and will be there until Monday, May 18, 2009. To learn more the system go to the following URL - Sonic & Visual Music Synthesizer.. or go to eBay and copy "Sonic & Visual Music Synthesizer - Synthi AKS & Laser Animator" into eBays search field.

Earlier Visual Music Resources

The Electronic Arts of Sound and Light - The Electronic Arts of Sound and Light by Ronald Pellegrino (c) 1983 by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company Inc. ISBN 0-442-26499-2. The following website provides excerpts from this book.

"I signed the contract to write The Electronic Arts of Sound and Light in the spring of 1977, started working on it in the fall of 1977, and finished it during the summer of 1981. During those four years I spent more than 9 months out of every year on the road giving multimedia performances in the USA and abroad, teaching music composition and technology for a year at Miami University and for three years at Texas Tech University, consulting on business electronic arts projects, founding/directing and finding funds for The Leading Edge Music Series in Lubbock, Texas, and helping to establish the long running New Music America Festivals. In other words, I was actually working on the subject material of the book and writing about it during the cracks in my schedule.

....

The book covers the first 14 years of my research in the electronic arts - from 1967 to 1981. ... it's the first book to deal in detail with the subjects of visual music, real-time composition, and performance multimedia with electronic instruments (in the 70s and early 80s it was called intermedia or integrated media).

The notion of visual music, a sphere I've been exploring since the late 60s, is just beginning to pick up steam in the late 90s probably because the younger generation of artists is growing up in a multimedia world. The vast majority of older (over 30?) visual artists tend to be studio, gallery, and object oriented. They are materialists with a weak sense of the ephemeral and whatÕs involved in articulating the dynamical flow of time. Specialists in music seem to be too busy with their notes or generally disinclined to explore the sphere of visual music. Finally in the late 90s the new breed of multimedia artist is emerging, younger artists who seem to sense that today's instrument of the electronic arts, the multimedia computer, has the built-in facility for integrating the electronic arts of sound and light. The multimedia computer and a language like Java, that can function as a software multimedia synthesizer, bring us to the threshold of a visual music age."...

Source: Ron Pellegrino - Read full excerpts at:
http://www.ronpellegrinoselectronicartsproductions.org/Pages/EASL_Intro.html

Some relevant links

Visual Music Laser Images

Visual Music

Main Website for Ron Pellegrino

http://www.ronpellegrinoselectronicartsproductions.org/








Search Amazon.com for emergent visual music

Heike Sperling : Visual Music Resource

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

Visual Music Essay - 2007 - Maura McDonnell

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 you could email me at mmcd@soundingvisual.com, I would be delighted to hear from you and to share the resource on this blog.

Dennis H. Miller based in Northeastern University, Boston invited me to write an essay on Visual Music for the program catalog for the Visual Music Marathon held in Boston, US in April in 2007 and then presented fully again in New York, US in April 2009.  The essay was published in both catalogs.  The essay was based on visual music lecture notes I had prepared for a specific set of classes I taught on Visual Music to students attending the Music and Media Technology M.Phil. course at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (I still present the visual music classes on that course).  At the time, the intention of the lecture notes was to introduce students to visual music and to show them that there was plenty of historical precedents for pursuing a very close relationship between music and image. As the  course has a very strong practical element to it, students have to create their own work.  So the point of the lecture was to provide a context from which they could possibly place their own music and image assignments and if they choose to also pursue this in their final thesis project.  The lecture I gave on visual music did have a very practical focus to it.  I shared these notes with Dennis H. Miller ( and he shared excellent teaching material with me).   Dennis invitation to me was to write up the lecture notes in an essay form.  It was not an easy task (much much easier to jot down notes and talk - as in a teaching situation)!

The essay is an introduction to visual music.   It is definitely not definitive, but it is a start for me to articulate beyond notes.  The essay has many credits from the experts who checked it over for me and to whom I am very grateful.

DOWNLOAD: The visual music essay (without images - text only) can be downloaded here.

The New York Visual Music Marathon - 2009 program booklet can be downloaded from the Northeastern University website, the Visual Music Program Catalog - 2009  includes the visual music essay (not with all images from the print version, but with some) I wrote, but also includes the program note for the 60 or so contemporary works shown at the visual music marathon. 

[Maura McDonnell - author]

Experimental Music and Video Resource

Excellent experimental Music and Video Resource run by Spenayoung.



http://newmusicresource.blogspot.com/

Networked Performance Blog

Networked Performance Blog