Visual Music Archive

close Work Detail

 

Point Line Cloud 

(2001) 

is a collection of audio and video collaborations between Curtis Roads and Brian O'Reilly, it has been a ever shifting project over the years which constantly continues to evolve.

"Beneath the level of the note lies the realm of sound particles. Each particle is a pinpoint of sound. Recent advances let us probe and manipulate this microacoustical world. Sound particles dissolve the rigid bricks of musical composition-the notes and their intervals-into more fluid and supple materials. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as the density of particles increases. Sparse emissions produce rhythmic figures. By lining up the particles in rapid succession, one can induce an illusion of tone continuity or pitch. As the particles meander, they flow into liquid-like streams and rivulets. Dense agglomerations of particles form clouds of sound whose shapes evolve over time."

(Curtis Roads)

 

The first performance of the materials that grew into the project was in 2001 at a concert with Autechre and Russell Haswell in Los Angeles. Since then it has been performed in many diverse venus around the world.

 

The three excerpts presented are:

 

Fluxon

This work contains in part visual source materials provided by Matthew Marsden that were further layered and processed using various digital softwares.

 

Volt air pt. 3

The source material was generated using the analog video synthesizer the Sandin Image Processor located at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Thank you to Brett Williams and Edward Rankus who at the time helped Brian O'Reilly dig deeper into the IP.

 

Half life pt. 1 Sonal atoms

Was created using only a few seconds of footage that was then edited, layered, processed and re-processed to create the basis for the work. Curtis' book MICROSOUND had a profound influence on the conception of how to edit and construct this work, at times editing the video to the sound on a frame by frame level.

 

Source: Vimeo

 

 

Point Line Cloud, vierecke, stripes, kugeln, software, Code

Reading

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)

Notation. Calculation and Form in the Arts (2008) is a comprehensive catalogue (in German) edited by Dieter Appelt, Hubertus von Amelunxen and Peter Weibel which accompanied an exhibition of the same name at the Academy of the Arts, Berlin and the ZKM | Karlsruhe. (ZKM)

VJing (2010) is a reproduction of the Wikipedia article VJing, based upon the revision of July 25th 2010 and was produced as a physical outcome of the wiki-sprint, a collaborative writing workshop that was held 2010 in the frame of Mapping Festival, Geneva. (Greyscale Press)

Links

 

SEE ALSO

Golan Levin (*1972) is an American new media artist, composer, performer and engineer interested in developing artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of reactive expression. Golan Levin's work focuses on the design of systems for the creation, manipulation and performance of simultaneous image and sound, as part of a more general inquiry into the formal language of interactivity, and of nonverbal communications protocols in cybernetic systems. (Golan Levin)

Karl Kliem (*1969) studied at the well-known Hochschule für Gestaltung (University of Art and Design) in Offenbach. He developed real-time audio and visual systems and has designed the most diverse projects in the fields of multi-media, web design, and TV design, as well as music and audio production for films and interactive installations. Karl Kliem is a founding member of Involving-Systems (1994) and MESO (1997). (Dienststelle)

Audiovisuology: See this sound (2010) - An Interdisciplinary Compendium of Audiovisual Culture. This all-embracing compendium brings together texts on various art forms in which the relationship between sound and image plays a significant role and the techniques used in linking the two. The entire spectrum of audiovisual art and phenomena is presented in 35 dictionary entries. (Cornerhouse)

formula (2000), a constantly evolving work updated with each presentation, is a perfect synchronization between Ryoji Ikeda's sound frequencies and the movements on the screen. It places the viewer in a binary geometry of space, and exploits the darkness to amplify the perceptions, with outstanding success. (Ryoji Ikeda)

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)