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Alex Rutterford 

is a British director and graphic designer working mostly on music videos. His most well-known works include the videos for Gantz Graf by Autechre, Verbal by Amon Tobin and Go to Sleep by Radiohead.

Alex Rutterford studied graphic design at the Croydon School of Art and graduated in 1991. He started his professional career by designing graphics on sets for films such as Judge Dredd. He was a member of the design team lost in space where he worked as CG artist and creative director. Nowadays he is repped by production companies RSA and Black Dog, the promo division of RSA.

His most well-known works include the videos for Gantz Graf by Autechre, Verbal by Amon Tobin and Go to Sleep by Radiohead. Lesser known is the unofficial video he created for the Autechre track Eutow as part of the Channel 4 music programme Lo-fi in 2001.

His short film work includes Sound Engine, an early study made for onedotzero2 set to an Autechre song; 3space, again specially made for onedotzero and set to the overture of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro; and Monocodes. All these films and videos consist of 3D computer generated imagery, and feature visuals that follow the rhythm of the music very closely. These works were produced during his time at lost in space in the case of the onedotzero works as lost in space films.

 

Rutterford also designed the cover for the Autechre albums Draft 7.30 and Untilted, as well as the booklet and menu for Chris Cunningham's Directors Label DVD. In addition to this he worked as graphics designer on two music videos directed by Cunningham, namely Björk's All Is Full of Love (1999), and Squarepusher's Come On My Selector (1998) for which he created the video screens. He also did the camerawork, together with Rob Bliss, for Cunningham's Rubber Johnny.

 

His works have appeared in onedotzero film festivals, DVD releases, and the book onedotzero Motion Blur published by Laurence King, lovebytes, and several other digital film DVD compilations.

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

 

Alex Rutterford, *****, design

Reading

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)

Rewind, Play, Fast Forward (2010) – The Past, Present and Future of the Music Video by Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena (eds.) brings together different disciplines as well as journalists, museum curators and gallery owners in order to take a discussion of the past and present of the music video as an opportunity to reflect upon suited methodological approaches to this genre and to allow a glimpse into its future. (transcript Verlag)

Sonic Graphics/Seeing Sound (2000) by Matt Woolman presents exemplary work from studios around the world in three sections: Notation analyses the use of sign and symbol systems in creating identity and branding for music artists, recording projects and performances; Material considers how products can package the intrinsic nature of the music they contain; and Atmosphere looks at how space and multidimensional environmeaants can be used to visualize sound. A reference section includes studio websites and a glossary. (Thames & Hudson)

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SEE ALSO

Petard (2003-2008) is Depart's 'synapsisyntactical dewelloperawe', an audio-visual live performance for synced fragmented audio and video, mostly improvised live. This is a short capture of a Petard audio-visual live performance at Cimatics in Brussels, Belgium using Pure Data's Gem and Native Instrument's Reaktor. (Depart)

Maxim Zhestkov (1985) is a video artist, and motion and graphics designer based in Ulyanovk, Russia. At the age of six he was given his first computer, a ZX Spectrum, and devoted his time to drawing huge and very detailed illustrations. He was also a keen gamer, and believes his enthusiasm for design and CG effects can be traced back to those days. After high school he undertook a degree in architecture, which he followed by studying graphic design, fine art, illustration and sculpture. In 2009 he signed to Partizan. (Maxim Zhestkov)

Carsten Nicolai (*1965) is part of an artist generation who works intensively in the transitional area between art and science. As a visual artist Carsten Nicolai seeks to overcome the separation of the sensual perceptions of man by making scientific phenomenons like sound and light frequencies perceivable for both eyes and ears. His installations have a minimalistic aesthetic that by its elegance and consistency is highly intriguing. (raster-noton)

Resonance (2011) is a collaborative project with over 30 independent visual and audio designers and studios. The aim was to explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways. Animators and Audio Designers were paired up at the beginning of the project and were given the guidelines to create a piece between 12 and 20 seconds and in HD quality, the rest was up to them. (Resonance website)

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)