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Mikomikona 

is a Berlin duo composed by Andreas Eber and Birgit Schneider. Their audiovisual performances, aimed at an aesthetic minimalist strictness, are experimental lab sessions in which they focuse on the physic changes of sound into image and vice versa.

Mikomikona experimentally investigates the dynamic transformability of sound into image, image into sound and the effects of cross media interference.

 

They develop devices that enable them to connect and transform visual signals into acoustic signals and vice versa. They explore these devices in different audio-visual set-ups creating a synaesthetical environment. The resulting performance modules all share the idea of new symbolic coding of media information and are also used for live-VJing. For the performances they work with analogue media like overhead projectors, super-8 film projectors, video projectors as visual devices and sound.

 

Mikomikona use the simultaneity and speed of analogue electronic circuits. Their interest is more within the field of synthesizers (modulated), rather than the paradigm of sequencers (serial, clocked and triggered, as used in digital environments).

 

By transforming information into different media formats they receive snippets of transformation noise – bruit parasitaire – that itself reflects our shifted use of media technology. The transformation noise is media specific by revealing the media structure itself.

 

In terms of acoustic-visual performances Mikomikona explores the dynamical transformability of technical image into sound and vice versa. By these means synaesthetic bypasses are encompassed and media content is newly coded. Computer experience makes transparent the exchangeability of code: the use of binary coding to represent image, text and sound. The binary code seems to be the omnipotent currency in which nearly all content may be saved and reproduced.

 

Their work is about proving that as early as on the level of analogue modulation the operability of content is given. The release of signs from their semantic assignment does not implicitly require digitalisation. Analogue media present another access to information. This implies new ways of Bildhandlung, of ways to interact with media machinery besides toggling switches and buttons.

 

Source: Mikomikona's website

 

 

Mikomikona, berlin

Reading

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)

The Art of Projectionism (2007) by Frederick Baker (in German) sets out the principles behind his use of projectors in the film making process. He defines a projectionist school of filmmaking and media art. In this publication he also presented Ambient film, a surround experience that can be shown in specially developed cinemas. (Wikipedia)

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SEE ALSO

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playZero (2010) by Victor Morales was originally part of an opera called Playzero made at Festspielhaus St. Pölten in June 2010. Music by Wolfgang Mitterer.

audioreactive (2009) by Jorinna Scherle is based on the principles of minimal music and visualizes microtonal events such as frequency, duration, tone pitch and sound volume in 3-dimensional environments. (Kino Šiška)

Transforma (Baris Hasselbach, Luke Bennett and Simon Krahl), a Berlin based video artist collective, combine the momentum of VJ improvisation with the power of highly composed imagery and narrative. Transforma started producing experimental video art in 2001 and have been taking their imageworld and production processes to higher levels of absurdity ever since. They have worked on promos, concert video and live cinema approaches, in collaboration with Apparat and Funkstörung among others, and have VJed in clubs in Berlin and around Europe. (CueMixMagazine)