Gert-Jan Prins 

(1961) has been known for twenty years as one of the most challenging sound artists in the Netherlands. He is an autodidact who focuses on the sonic and musical qualities of electronic 'noise'.

In his work, Gert-Jan Prins makes connections with modern electronic club culture, occupying a radical position with his investigation of electronic sound and its relationship to the visual. He also creates links with the performance art and machine art of the 1980s, which reshaped the legacy of industrial society to produce threatening, yet sometimes also sublime, encounters with technology.

Prins has built various analogue- and digital electronic systems that create signals within the listenable audio domain.

 

Besides his solo-project, current projects include MIMEO, Synchronator (with Dutch video artist Bas van Koolwijk) and The Flirts (with Cor Fuhler). He has collaborated with amongst others Pita, Thomas Lehn, Lee Ranaldo, Anne la Berge, Fennesz, the Vacuum Boys, Peter van Bergen, Marcus Schmickler, Raed Yassin, Koen Nutters, Norbert Moslang, Tomas Korber, Thomas Ankersmit, Giuseppe Ielasi, Carlos Giffoni, Luc Houtkamp and Misha Mengelberg.

And, with visual artists like Bas van Koolwijk, Rob Flint, Xavier Quérel, Andre Avelas, Manel Esparbé i Gasca, Petra Dolleman, Martha Colburn, Cyrus Frisch.

Gert-Jan Prins also collaborated with composers and ensembles, e.g. LOOS, Maarten Altena Ensemble, Gilius van Bergeijk, David Dramm and Domenico Sciajno.

 

Source: Gert-Jan Prins' website

 

 

Gert-Jan Prins, *****

Reading

Computer Music Journal: Visual Music (2005) - The articles in this issue are all devoted to the topic of Visual Music: audiovisual creations in which the artist strives to endow the video component with formal and abstract qualities that mimic those of musical composition. (Computer Music Journal)

Digital Harmony (1980): On the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art – John Whitney, Sr. wanted to create a dialog between "the voices of light and tone." All of his early experiments in film and the development of sound techniques lead toward this end. He felt that music was an integral part of the visual experience; the combination had a long history in man's primitive development and was part of the essence of life. His theories On the complementarity of Music and Visual Art were explained in his book, Digital Harmony, published by McGraw-Hill in 1980. (Paradise 2012)

 

SEE ALSO

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Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (1994) by French critic and composer Michel Chion reassesses audiovisual media since the revolutionary 1927 debut of recorded sound in cinema, shedding crucial light on the mutual relationship between sound and image in audiovisual perception. (Colombia University Press)

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