Visual Music Archive

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Eye 76 

(2010) 

is Eye's first-ever special issue on the dynamic and continually inspiring sector of design for music. Design can make music look good, but when they really work together you have magic.

Eye 76, typography, design

Over the years we have published many articles about design for music, but this is Eye's first-ever special issue on this dynamic and continually inspiring sector. Designers are in a privileged position to add visual drama to music; to make it more understandable and enjoyable; to communicate the intangible essence of vibrating air molecules into the worlds of words, images and moving graphics. Design can make music look good, but when they really work together you have magic.

 

Source: Eye magazine

 

 

Big Active, Vaughan Oliver, United Visual Artists, Kate Moross, Laurie Anderson, ECM, US gig posters, metal umlauts and Alex Steinweiss, inventor of the album cover. Plus: Matthew Carter's first wood type.

 

Source: Eye shop

 

 

Eye 76, typography, designEye 76, typography, design

Reading

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)

Grid Index (2009) by Carsten Nicolai is the first comprehensive visual lexicon of patterns and grid systems. Based upon years of research, artist and musician Carsten Nicolai has discovered and unlocked the visual code for visual systems into a systematic equation of grids and patterns. The accompanying CD contains all of the grids and patterns featured in the publication from the simplest grids made up entirely of squares to the most complex irregular ones with infinitely unpredictable patterns of growth, as editable vector graphic data files. (Gestalten)

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)

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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)

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)

Rimantas Lukavicius (KORB) (*1983) is a Lithuanian CGI director. He started to experiment with motion graphics in 2001 and studied Photo/Media in Vilnius Art Academy. His short film Ku Ku won the Best Animated Short film at the 5th KaraFilm Festival. In 2005 Rimantas Lukavicius founded KORB to integrate visual effects, motion design, live action and mixed media. The Vilnius based company works for worldwide brands. (KORB)

Matt Pyke (*1967) is a painter, photographer, artist, curator, designer, animator, director, producer and lecturer based in a log cabin studio in Sheffield, UK. He founded Universal Everything after 8 years at the internationally renowned studio, The Designers Republic from 1996 - 2004. (Universal Everything)

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)