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Kurt Laurenz Theinert 

(*1963), photographer and light artist, concentrates in his work on visual experiences that do not refer, as images, to anything.

Kurt Laurenz Theinert is striving for an abstract, reductiv aesthetic that has ultimately led him – through a wish for more dematerialisation – from photography to light as a medium. With the aid of software developers Roland Blach and Philipp Rahlenbeck, he has also created an ‘image instrument’ (visual piano) on a MIDI-keyboard basis, that allows him to translate his artistic intentions into live performances while configuring time with light. Close collaboration with Richard Spaeth, a sound artist, and several musicians has enriched his work not only by adding another, non-material medium – sound – it has also promoted constant refining and monitoring of his own artistic stance.

 

Source: Kurt Laurenz Theinert

 

 

The visual piano is an instrument which makes it possible to create moving images in a space. It is unique and was conceived and developed by the photographer and light installation artist Kurt Laurenz Theinert in collaboration with the software designers Roland Blach and Philip Rahlenbeck.
Using a MIDI-keyboard it is possible to generate varying graphic patterns which can be digitally projected onto one or more screens. These dynamic and immediate drawings in light are not (as with VJ soft-and Hardware) generated by pre-recorded clips, but every moment of the performance is being played and modulated live and in real time via the keyboard and pedals.
Initially Theinert projected his drawings in light straight onto one screen; the expansion of the projection into 360° allows him to expand the visual experience of the audience into three dimensions. The intensified visual experience is astonishing: The defining edges of the darkened space are replaced by big, moving structures of light and the viewer gets immersed in a totally new cosmos of moving lines and fields of colour. The projection onto one screen was strongly reminiscent of constructivist painting and other modernist movements, the 360° projections generate architectural and technical associations. One is reminded of computer generated 3D simulations or laser beams. The symmetrical composition of the projection creates crystalline shapes that remind us of the design principles of Art-Deco or the utopian designs of expressionist architecture. At the same time the psychedelic colours quote the aesthetics of the Sixties.
Form and content are of one here. The visual piano performances explore professional contemporary artistic practice through the abstract, ephemeral medium of light, but at the same time they are consciously located in close proximity to the genre of serious entertainment.
(Winfried Stürzl)

Source: Kurt Laurenz Theinert


Kurt Laurenz Theinert, expanded cinema, laser, piano / organ, 360º

Reading

Farbe-Licht-Musik – Synästhesie und Farblichtmusik (2005) by Jörg Jewanski and Natalia Sidler focuses on the research on the color-light-music of Alexander Lászlo who in 1925 achieved overwhelming success with his multimedia show. A short time after his new art form fell into oblivion. The autors of this work revived and developed the experiments of Lászlo: his music has been rediscovered and coupled with actual visuals. (Natalia Sidler)

Expanded Cinema (1970) - In a brilliant and far-ranging study, Gene Youngblood traces the evolution of cinematic language to the end of fiction, drama, and realism. New technological extensions of the medium have become necessary. Thus he concentrates on the advanced image-making technologies of computer films, television experiments, laser movies, and multiple-projection environments. Outstanding works in each field are analyzed in detail. Methods of production are meticulously described, including interviews with artists and technologists. (John Coulthart)

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SEE ALSO

Laser Show by Robin Fox describes, in three-dimensional visual space, the geometry of sound. Enveloping the audience in synchronous sound and light information, the experience resembles a synaesthetic experience where what you hear is also what you see. The same electricity generated to move the speaker cones is sent simultaneously to high-speed motors that deflect the laser light on an x/y axis converting sonic vibration into light movement. (Robin Fox)

Mortal Engine (2008) produced by well known australian dance company Chunky Move. Director: Gideon, Interactive System Designer: Frieder Weiss, Laser performance: Robin Fox, Composer: Ben Frost. Mortal Engine is a intermedia dance performance using movement and sound responsive projections to portray an ever-shifting, shimmering world in which the limits of the human body are an illusion. (Chunky Move)

Robin Fox is an artist straddling the often artificial divide between audible and visible arts. As an audio-visual performance artist his work has featured in festivals worldwide. Recent appearances include a commissioned performance for the Henie Onstad Kunstcenter, Oslo, Mois Multi Festival, Quebec City, Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz, Musica Genera Festival, Warsaw and the Yokohama Triennale. (Robin Fox)

Light Music (1975) by Lis Rhodes is an innovative work that experiments with celluloid and sound to push the formal, spatial and performative boundaries of cinema. An iconic work of expanded cinema, it creates a more central and participatory role for the viewer within a dynamic, immersive environment. Formed from two projections facing one another on opposite screens, Light Music is Lis Rhodes’s response to what she perceived as the lack of attention paid to women composers in European music. (Tate Modern)

LSP - alveole 14 (2007) by Edwin van der Heide is a research trajectory exploring compositional relationships between sound, space, light and color. Lissajous figures form the starting point for the developed relations between sound and visual shape. By combining laser light and fog it becomes possible to project in space, instead of on a surface. (Edwin van der Heide)