Shane McKenna - Moving Lights in D

Shane McKenna is a composer and video artist based in Ireland, who creates the most intricate muscial visual music pieces.  He expolores the use of animated graphic notation to create musical collaboration.
His latest piece - Moving Lights in D is a wonderful example of his approach.  It can be viewed on Vimeo and is embedded in this post


Moving Lights in D from Shane Mc Kenna on Vimeo.

Information about Moving Lights in D
"To experiment with processed video footage as an animated score I performed this short piece myself in twenty separate takes on both classical guitar and electric bass. Each track was recorded listening to playback from the previous track only to allow some interaction between parts but a free feeling overall. I stayed within the key of Dmaj to tie the layers together while following the visual rhythms gave a sense of pulse at certain points. Playing along with D maj or B min scales will sound tasty if you have an instrument handy or just follow the visuals with any notes or sounds, why not?"
Source: Vimeo description
http://www.vimeo.com/10864184

Links
http://www.vimeo.com/user921277
http://www.myspace.com/smkenna

rain - audio visual composition - iphone application

"rain is a minimalistic audio visual composition you can play yourself"

The iphone application was created by Rainer Kohlberger, a Berlin based freelance visual artist and designer.

rain documentation website

http://kohlberger.net/rain

credits
rain was created by rainer kohlberger 2010.
sound samples by max kickinger.

follow
twitter.com/khlrqa

vimeo
http://vimeo.com/10557321

You can view more work by Rainer on his website
http://kohlberger.net/

IQBIT - Electronic Music Composer - Collaboration with Visual Artists

Barcelona based IQBIT is an electronic composer from Rome based in Barcelona, Spain. IQBIT collaborates with Visual Artists, creating electronic music and sound for collaborative video and audio visual projects.  The works from these colloborations are both linked to research in synaesthesia but are also definitely are Visual Music.  Their visual music arises from a collaboration between music composers and visual artists, so the resulting video is a unity of the composition of visual and audio material.  Some of the videos are live sets - consisting of live audio and video. The words used to describe their works - sound video. Their live sets are described as Audio Visual Projects.
Iqbit myspace link: http://www.myspace.com/iqbit

Collaborations with xx+xy visuals

Bo Za AV project

IQBIT has created the sound for a Audio Video live set with visuals by xx+xy visuals.
This project is called Bo Za AV project and is documented online on the xx+xy visuals website. There are also high quality video excerpts.
Project Description: "Abstract and graphic audiovisual language presenting itself into rhythmic synch where the transfigurations is controlled thorough the digital animation process. The live project, sound and imagery are synchronized asserting a form of glitch minimalism re-assembled into rhythmic audio-visual landscape. Time of the gig 30min."

http://www.xxxyvisuals.com/projectBoZa.htm
Watch Live Link

Rabbi

AV collaborative project by xx+xy visuals with IQBIT
"Experimental video project based on sound by IQBIT. The name of the work is directly inspired by the name
of the sound piece from IQBIT EP Liminal ‘08. This work is based on single black and white image that was
chosen among variety of images commonly used as desktop picture and typically representing beautiful
landscapes displayed on our desktop computers. This image is not representing any more urban landscape
with one bridge heading to some-where but is reconstructed into abstract and unique audiovisual language
presenting itself into rhythmic AV synch where the transfigurations is inspired and also controlled thorough
the digital animation process. This digital process of transfiguration of the image into abstract and computer
based work that use sound as source material, gives us the possibility to re-construct animations and
imagery through controlled rhythmic audio synch and effects of the software. The Rabbi sound and imagery
are synchronized asserting a form of glitch minimalism re-assembled into rhythmic audio-visual landscape. "
Source: Rabbi Project Description
http://www.xxxyvisuals.com/projects/AV_Rabbi_xxxy_iqbit/Rabbi-description_bio.pdf
Video excerpts at the above link also.
Quick link to video here.
Rabbi version 2 video link.

Zpac and Shart

Watch Zpac
Watch Shart

Collaborations with Lasal

Kristallographie - 2009



Links
xx+xy visuals
Lasal
http://www.myspace.com/iqbit

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

Composer - Ronan Guilfoyle - Rhythm Book/Essays

Being Irish of course, I am aware and familiar with contemporary music composition in Ireland.  I hope to make more posts about music composition or things musical that could be helpful for visual music or audio visual work. Ronan Guilfoyle is one of the prominent contemporary composers working in Ireland today, he is also a Acoustic Bass Guitarist and Educator. It has always been of interest to me that Visual Music has at its core a strong consideration for music composition or a musical thinking to composition. What is it that is being explored with visuals that is so musical - one of the more important elements is rhythm - how time is handled. Ronan has written some essays on the subject of rhythm in relation of course to music composition and jazz in particular. They are available to check out on his website.(Author comment)

The essays on rhythm - some of the titles listed on his website - such as
 'creative rhythmic concepts for jazz improvisation;
the rhythm book – 10 years later……….;
"where's the 1!?";
the art and science of time ii;
contemporary music?;
what is jazz?;
the art and science of time;
philosophy of jazz?;
control freaks?;
composition and improvisation
can be viewed at:
http://www.ronanguilfoyle.com/press.html


Purchase Creative Rhythms Concepts for Jazz Improvisation at Amazon

Ryoichi Kurokawa - Japan - audiovisual artist

"Ryoichi Kurokawa is a japanese audiovisual artist. His works take on multiple forms such as screening works, recordings, installation and live performance. Kurokawa composes time based sculpture with digital generated materials and field recorded sources, and the minimal and the complexities coexist there. Kurokawa accepts sound and imagery as a unit not as separately, and constructs very exquisite and precise computer based works with the audiovisual language. That shortens mutual distance, the reciprocity and the synchronization of sound and visual composition. He also performed live-visual for musicians such as HUMAN AUDIO SPONGE(ex.YMO: Sketch Show + Ryuichi Sakamoto). In recent years, Kurokawa is invited to numerous noted international festivals and museums in Europe, US and Asia including TATE MODERN[UK], ARS ELECTRONICA[AT], transmediale[DE], Shanghai eARTS[CN], MUTEK[CA], TodaysArt[NL] and SONAR[ES] for exhibition, screening or audiovisual concert, and he continues to be an active presence on the international stage."
Website: http://www.ryoichikurokawa.com/

Youtube:Ryoichi Kurokawa (Osaka, JP) @ cimatics 17/11 video clip - Audiovisual concert



Link to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtSiVgRDrk4

New work Rheo - audiovisual concert
"rheo is a triptych 5.1 surround sound cross-media performance by Ryoichi Kurokawa (JP). rheo will be premiered on March 19 & 20 at VIA Festival (Maubeuge, FR) and on April 2 & 3 at EXIT Festival (Maison des Arts de Créteil, Paris). (rheo is a Cimatics production)
website: http://www.cimatics.com/cms_site/news/archive/article.php?id=21

Junk Box Fraud - Multimedia Performance - Ireland

Junk Box Fraud -is an incredible music composition by Irish Composer Donnacha Dennehy for cl, trb, 2 pf, 2 speakers, tape, video [video by Hugh Reynolds and Gerry O'Brien]

This video in the vimeo excerpt was performed by Crash Ensemble, Natasha Lohan and Laura Moody at Shindig concert, SS Michael & John, Dublin, 13.10.07 with cameras by Mark Linnane and John Bates.

See also: http://www.crashensemble.com/

http://www.donnachadennehy.com

The video was premiered by Crash Ensemble in the Samuel Beckett theatre in 1997, which I saw and credit with my crazy but exciting path into visual music... it was an incredible work and is one my favourite multimedia music compositions - visuals and music.  That particular performance was sheer magic. It was the sheer combination of energies of the singer performances, the energy and speed of the rhythm of the music and the incredible energy and appearance and disappearance of the visuals in the video projection behind the musicians, the impact of this work and the blackness of the theatre setting of the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Trinity College, Dublin left me reeling - this was one amazing performance, composition and video...and still is of course. (Author comment)

COMPOSER - Jim Aitchison - Visible Music

Visible Music

Composing visions of sound by UK composer Jim Aitchison.

"Jim Aitchison is a composer whose music derives from a range of sources, often from the world of the visual, re-imagining contemporary and past artworks as notations of sound. He makes music for chamber ensembles, orchestra and solo performers out of encounters with visual art and living artists, curators and galleries. The work is proposed both as a response to these encounters and as part of a wider engagement with fundamental musical and artistic issues."

His responses to art/paintings in a musical context are quite extraordinary. The scores resemble the visual - as in the screenshot when you come to his website initially, here a painting entitled Elegy for Terry Frost by John Hyland is scored in the most incredible manner. It is worth taking ones time to go through his website (my comment).

"Jim Aitchison is a composer and a Henry Moore Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music and Birkbeck College, University of London. He is recognised for a particular vision linking visual art with compositional practice. He composes what curator Paul Moorhouse describes as 'conversations between art-forms,' working directly with leading figures from the worlds of art and music."

See Biography
Website: http://www.jimaitchison.com/

Visual Music Marathon - April 11th New York

Visual Music Marathon to be held in New York on April 11th, 2009

For Immediate Release

Contact: Keri Murawski
212.592.2164, kmurawski@sva.edu
Dennis Miller
617.373.4132, de.miller@neu.edu

SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS, THE NEW YORK DIGITAL SALON AND NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY PRESENT THE 2009 VISUAL MUSIC MARATHON

GENRE-BENDING WORK BY OVER 100 ARTISTS FROM 15 COUNTRIES

Saturday, April 11, 10am — 10pm
Visual Arts Theater, School of Visual Arts
333 West 23 Street, New York
Free and open to the public

The MFA Computer Art Department at School of Visual Arts, the New York Digital Salon and the Department of Music and Multimedia Studies at Northeastern University present the New York premiere of the Visual Music Marathon, a 12-hour festival showcasing 120 works by contemporary digital artists and composers from around the world. The event offers an encyclopedic look into the burgeoning practice of visual music, which combines animation and musical composition. The roots of the genre date back more than two hundred years to the ocular harpsichords and color-music scales of the 18th century; the current art form came to fruition following the emergence of film and video in the 20th century.

PREVIEW ANIMATION from Visual Music Marathon

The Visual Music Marathon presents a remarkable array of artistic strategies and sensibilities. Some of the selected works consist of abstract visual interpretations of pieces of music, while others apply structural concepts of music to create moving images, or explore the overlap between visual and musical languages. The artists make use of a range of media and technologies, including found footage, hand-drawn animation, stop-motion photography, digitally processed video, computer-generated imagery, and paintings made directly on film. Works include audio tracks ranging from computer-generated scores, to sampled sounds from nature, to both classical and contemporary musical compositions.

Northeastern University faculty member Dennis Miller, artistic director and curator for the festival, explains, “With the Visual Music Marathon, we have put together the largest and most
historically representative selection of work in this field. It is a unique opportunity to see the best of cutting-edge digital art from around the world as well as rarely screened historical gems in the field of visual music.” Bruce Wands, chair of the MFA Computer Art Department at SVA and curator of the New York Digital Salon hour of the Marathon, remarked, “We are excited to share all of these works with the city of New York–the majority of which have never been seen here before. It is a wonderfully diverse group of films, which gives a sense of the creativity and momentum in this field right now.”

The program includes works by established figures in the field, such as Canadian/Belgian artist Jean Detheux (Daydream Mechanics V Sketch 3, Rupture and Liaisons), Icelandic artist Steina
Vasulka (Trevor), Austrian artist Tina Frank (Chronomops, Pitbudp) and American artists
Stephanie Maxwell (Time Streams, All That Remains) and Karen Aqua (Kakania, Sensorium).

The festival also presents the work of emerging digital artists including SVA alumnus Joe Tekippe (2006 MFA Computer Art; Modal Drawing Toy), German artist Robert Seidel (_grau) and UKbased artists Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt of Semiconductor (200 Nanowebbers), among others. In addition to the contemporary works, the program will include examples of rare, historic works from early practitioners of the art form, such as Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger, which will be screened on 16mm film. The Visual Music Marathon will also feature live audio-visual acts: 1/X, performed by artist and SVA alumnus Chiaki Watanabe (1996 BFA Computer Art) and musician David Galbraith; and S2: Simstim Squared, performed by artist Marjan Moghaddam and composer Adam Caine.

The MFA Computer Art Department at SVA emphasizes creative experimentation and a multidisciplinary approach. Dedicated to producing digital artists of the highest caliber, the department guides each student in the development of a personal artistic style and in a course of study that is individually tailored to meet his or her needs. The two-year, 60-credit MFA degree
program offers several areas of specialization: animation, digital video, installation and digital fine art, interactive media, networked media and performance, or the option of a multidisciplinary track. Work by students in the department has been honored by the Student Academy Awards and appeared in such prestigious venues as the Whitney Biennial; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater; the Ars Electronica Center; and the Annecy, Ottowa and New York Animation Festivals.

Since 1993, the New York Digital Salon (NYDS) has served as a catalyst for greater public awareness and appreciation of new media art, and continues to promote the creative use of technology and innovation in contemporary art. The NYDS maintains an extensive online archive of digital art, artists and essays. The NYDS contributes to cultural growth through educational and public programs, exhibitions and screenings, both nationally and internationally.
A project of the MFA Computer Art Department at SVA, the NYDS has received support from the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, NYSCA, and NESTA-UK, among others.

Founded in 1898, Northeastern University is a private research university located in the heart of Boston. The University’s distinctive cooperative education program, where students alternate semesters of full-time study with semesters of paid work in fields relevant to their professional interests and major, is one of the largest and most innovative in the world. The University offers a comprehensive range of undergraduate and graduate programs leading to degrees through the doctorate.

School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City is an established leader and innovator in the education of artists. From its inception in 1947, the faculty has been comprised of professionals working in the arts and art-related fields. SVA provides an environment that nurtures creativity, inventiveness and experimentation, enabling students to develop a strong sense of identity and a clear direction of purpose.

Media Contact: For more information, please contact Keri Murawski at 212.592.2164 or e-mail kmurawski@sva.edu.

Image: Sean Capone, from The Plain Silvery Side of This Disc, 2006

For further details about the festival or to view the April 11 program schedule, please visit www.2009vmm.neu.edu and www.nydigitalsalon.org.


LINKS TO ARTISTS/ORGANISATIONS MENTIONED IN THIS PRESS RELEASE

Dennis Miller
Bruce Wands
Jean Detheux
Steina Vasulka
Tina Frank
Stephanie Maxwell
Karen Aqua
Joe Tekippe
Robert Seidel
Semiconductor
Chiaki Watanabe
David Galbraith
Marjan Moghaddam
Adam Caine
New York Digital Salon

Wolfram Tones: An Experiment in a New Kind of Music

http://tones.wolfram.com/

"WolframTones works by taking simple programs from Wolfram's computational universe, and using music theory and Mathematica algorithms to render them as music. Each program in effect defines a virtual world, with its own special story--and WolframTones captures it as a musical composition. "
This is really fun to play with....!!! Amazing composition controls in terms of a huge variety of musical scales