Mark Fell 

combines interests in experimental music, contemporary art, computer technology and philosophy, his work has been performed and exhibited internationally to wide critical acclaim. Mark Fell is one half of snd.

In late 2010 Mark Fell released two solo albums: Multistability (raster-noton) and UL8 (Editions Mego). His solo exhibition Coherence and Proximity was on view at the Woodmill in South London last December. 

 

Source: Artforum

 

 

The correspondence between Arnold Schoenberg and Wassily Kandinsky at the beginning of the 20th century brims with the sanguine dream that they could be on the point of achieving some sort of synaesthesia, a new form in which the divisions between music and visual art collapsed, resulting in an incredible liberation for the human spirit. The two men fell out before they could ever really get started on this undertaking. However, in recent years, sound art has attepmted to marry the musical with the visual and explore what the consquence, if any, might be.

 

British artist Mark Fell has been working in this field for years. He combines interests in music (as on half of snd), art, technology and philosophy. He has examined the sacred geometries that are said to be divined inm for the example, the Tibetan singing bowl or the patterns of the sand mandala, and pondered how their complexities might somehow unlock the doors to the deeper conciousness, with the assistant of cognitive neuroscience.

 

Source: Mark Fell's website

 

 

Mark Fell, *****, flicker / strobe

Reading

Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses (2002) by Richard E. Cytowic disposes of earlier criticisms that the phenomenon cannot be real, demonstrating that it is indeed brain-based. Following a historical introduction, Cytowic lays out the phenomenology of synesthesia in detail and gives criteria for clinical diagnosis and an objective test of genuineness. (MIT Press)

Grid Index (2009) by Carsten Nicolai is the first comprehensive visual lexicon of patterns and grid systems. Based upon years of research, artist and musician Carsten Nicolai has discovered and unlocked the visual code for visual systems into a systematic equation of grids and patterns. The accompanying CD contains all of the grids and patterns featured in the publication from the simplest grids made up entirely of squares to the most complex irregular ones with infinitely unpredictable patterns of growth, as editable vector graphic data files. (Gestalten)

Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film 1910-1975 (1979) is a catalogue of an exhibition held at the Hayward Gallery in London from 3 May until 17 June 1979 on rare, essential and controversial avant-garde film history.

 

SEE ALSO

Alex Rutterford is a British director and graphic designer working mostly on music videos. He studied graphic design at the Croydon School of Art and graduated in 1991. His most well-known works include the videos for Gantz Graf by Autechre, Verbal by Amon Tobin and Go to Sleep by Radiohead. (Wikipedia)

Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1939) - The four-minute, hand-painted Dufaycolor film with a colour accompaniment by Len Lye, matches visual motifs to musical instruments: diagonals introduce piano phrases, circles express drum beats, wavy horizontals represent guitars licks, vertical lines map base parts, etc. Primary red, blue and deep green colour fields are rendered frameless by upwardly cascading kite shapes, luminous tapered stripes, and batik-like patterns. (Senses of Cinema)

Rubber Johnny (2005) by Chris Cunningham is six minutes and ten seconds of terror that fuses the music of Aphex Twin with his own unique visual style. The titular Johnny is a mutant kid stuck in a wheelchair who is shut in the dark by his parents and amuses himself and his pet dog by shape-shifting and raving. Chris himself plays the part of Johnny and the film itself became a kind of side project that evolved out of a 30 second promo for Aphex Twin's Druqks and took several years to complete for both the shooting and the editing. (Pixelsurgeon)

Do While (1995) by Sebastian Oschatz is the 24-minute opener of 94 Diskont, arguably one of the most radical electronic albums of the 1990s. Oval equally drew praise and controversy for their assault on techno's restrictions by literally deconstructing music and digital audio by using X-acto knives, paint, and tape to damage the surfaces of CDs, only to stitch it back together in loops of melody punctuated by the CD's physical skips. (Stylus)

VJam Theory: Collective Writings on Realtime Visual Performance (2008) presents the major concerns of practitioners and theorists of realtime media under the categories of performance, performer and interactors, audiences and participators. The volume is experimental in its attempt to produce a collective theoretical text with a focus on a new criticality based on practitioner/ artist theory in which artist/ practitioners utilise theoretical models to debate their practices. (VJ Theory)