Lia

is an Austrian artist and one of the early pioneers of Software and Net Art. She has been creating digital art, installations and sound works since 1995.

Well-known for her work with abstract generative studies and live visuals, Lia is a good example of the autodidact programming artist. Born in Graz, Austria, she has no formal education in art or programming, and got involved in the electronic art and music scene of Vienna partly through collaborations with another Austrian artist, dextro. Their collaboration turux.org consisted of a series of abstract generative sketches done in Director Shockwave, and was very influential in the mid-90s web scene.

Lia rapidly gained a reputation for her own work through the site re-move.org, again using Shockwave and minimalist abstract graphics to great effect. By her own description, Lia’s work is inspired by natural systems such as invertebrate animals and plants. Coming from an Austrian brand of abstraction, her minimalist graphics typically use minimal color and are strictly non-representational. She frequently uses angular shapes as building blocks for compositions with an unmistakably organic feel.

Lia has recently moved away from web-based work, working on installations or live visuals for music. She has a long-standing collaboration with Portuguese experimental music group @c and the Cronica Electronica label. Now she often performs as TinyLittleElements with partner Sebastian Meissner, alternately a pure visuals set or an audiovisual combo group. Lia has done live visuals at many prestigious festivals such as Ars Electronica, Mutek and Sonar, sometimes doing marathon sets of 7 hours using her own custom performance software.

Source: Generator.x

Lia, software, female

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Notations 21 (2009) by Theresa Sauer features illustrated musical scores from more than 100 international composers, all of whom are making amazing breakthroughs in the art of notation. Notations 21 is a celebration of innovations in musical notation, employing an appreciative aesthetic for both the aural and visual beauty of these creations. The musical scores in this edition were created by composers whose creativity could not be confined by the staff and clef of traditional western notation, but whose musical language can communicate with the contemporary audience in a uniquely powerful way. (Notations 21 Project)

Audio.Visual - On Visual Music and Related Media (2009) by Cornelia Lund and Holger Lund (Eds.) is divided into two sections: the first deals with the academic discussion on the subject of visual music; the second introduces contemporary paradigms of audio-visual praxis in brief presentations and contextualises them. Apart from being a guide in the historical sense, this new volume provides theoretical approaches to understanding and making visual music. (Fluctuating Images)

VJ: Audio-Visual Art + VJ Culture (2006) edited by D-Fuse. A major change has taken place at dance clubs worldwide: the advent of the VJ. Once the term denoted the presenter who introduced music videos on MTV, but now it defines an artist who creates and mixes video, live and in sync to music, whether at dance clubs and raves or art galleries and festivals. This book is an in-depth look at the artists at the forefront of this dynamic audio-visual experience. (Laurence King Publishing)

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Construction 76 (2008) by video artist LIA was created in collaboration with the musicians collective @c. A five-minute sound track was taken from @c’s 55-minute track 76 and synchronized with visuals: parallel to a sound oscillating between bongo sounds, electronics, rich sonic associations and atmospheric piano/cello sounds, the computer-programmed video features arabesque-like shapes and simple graphic elements that arise against a cosmic, black and red background, multiply and vanish again. (Lia)

v3 / G.S.I.L.XXIX (2004) by video artist LIA shows a cut of the live audio visual performances of LIA and the Portuguese electronic band, @c, whereby both the image and the sound layer are improvised. As with the visuals, the music is also mostly digital. Muted rhythm patterns are steadily deconstructed, so that they sound increasingly like freejazz. (Lia)

Tina Frank started up her own business as a designer in 1995 and was soon referred to as one of Austria’s shooting stars in web design. She designs packing for music. Many of her cover designs, especially those for music labels Mego/ Editions Mego (AT), Idea Records (US) have been published in numerous design reference works and are considered influential. The book Graphic Design for the 21st Century (Charlotte & Peter Fiell, Taschen Verlag) listed her among the top 100 graphic designers worldwide. (Tina Frank)

‘vE-”jA: Art + Technology of Live Audio-Video (2006) by Xarene Eskander is a global snapshot of an exploding genre of tech-art performance: VJing and live audio-video. The book covers 40 international artists with 400+ colour images and 50+ movies and clips on an accompanying DVD and web downloads. (VJ Book)

Tarik Barri is an audiovisual composer based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Reflecting his interests in programming, drawing and composing into a coherent multimedial discipline, he developed and uses software that merges audio and visuals into a new audiovisual reality. (Sonic Acts Festival)

Brian O'Reilly is the creator of various works for moving images, electronic/noise music, mixed media collage, installation, and is a contrabassist, focusing on the integration of electronic treatments and extended playing techniques. (Brian O'Reilly on Vimeo)

formula (2000), a constantly evolving work updated with each presentation, is a perfect synchronization between Ryoji Ikeda's sound frequencies and the movements on the screen. It places the viewer in a binary geometry of space, and exploits the darkness to amplify the perceptions, with outstanding success. (Ryoji Ikeda)

Visual Music Archive

Lia

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