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Strata #2 

(2009) 

by Quayola explores the icons of french gothic imagery and architecture, focusing on the layering of times function and representations. Music: Mira Calix and Autobam.

Strata #2 describes an imaginary alteration of architectural matter. By moving through the spaces of Notre Dame and Saint Eustache a process of metamorphosis is slowly revealed, transforming structure and function of the original churches. De-contextualizing religious stained-glass imagery, this piece plays with history and its image. It challenges the stratified historical meanings detained in the western society through time. Assuming different meanings, the represented stained-glass windows appear under a new perspective that focuses on their images rather than on their historical and architectural significance. In a dynamic dialogue between sound, image and architecture, Strata #2 gives life to a hybrid dimension where reality and artificiality coexist and interact harmoniously.

 

Source: Quayola's website

 

 

Strata #2, sacral, architecture, Video Clip

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)

Audio.Visual - On Visual Music and Related Media (2009) by Cornelia Lund and Holger Lund (Eds.) is divided into two sections: the first deals with the academic discussion on the subject of visual music; the second introduces contemporary paradigms of audio-visual praxis in brief presentations and contextualises them. Apart from being a guide in the historical sense, this new volume provides theoretical approaches to understanding and making visual music. (Fluctuating Images)

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)

Links

 

SEE ALSO

Yannick Jacquet (*1980) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. Originally trained as a graphic artist, he now devotes his time to developing a personal language using video and a wealth of projection techniques. Yannick Jacquet's work is characterised by a desire to break out of the traditional formats of video-projection and finding ways to integrate video into the performance space. These ideas are developed and performed in the form of audiovisual performances, installations and scenography. (Yannick Jacquet)

Scanner: Light Turned Down (2001) by London-based D-Fuse is a performance focusing on the rhythmic relationship between light and sound as well as a live interchange between artists charting a conversational movement of colour, musical fragments, texture and image. (D-Fuse on Vimeo)

One Minute Soundsculpture (2009) by Daniel Franke (We Are Chopchop) scored by Ryoji Ikeda and filled with visual shenanigans that correspond to the soundtrack. (We Love You So)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982) [ˈkɔɪɑːnɪsˌkɑːtsiː], also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. (Wikipedia)

PMP is an audio-visual collective based in Singapore that focuses on the synaesthetic experience where sound and visuals interact in real time, steering away from the notion that audio and visuals are often the by-products of one another. Started in 2009 by Ivan, Felix and Bin, PMP’s music takes the form of minimal electronic music that fuses microsound, glitches and the sound of acoustic instruments. Visually, it is highly distinctive with generative visuals that reacts or controlled in real time. (PMP)