Visual Music Archive

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The Z-Axis 

(2003) 

is a multi layered live audio visual performance by The Light Surgeons that fuses classic cult cinema with electronic sound scapes mixed live by DJ and audio artist Scanone.

The Z-Axis has been toured internationally to venues such as: The Guggenheim Art Museum in Bilbao, San Fransico Art Institute, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the Villette in Paris between 2003 and 2006.

 

The show re-mixes the cult film The Fountain Head, the story of an architect who struggles to maintain his individualist ideas through his modernist designs, and famously explores the notion of the individual against society. The Fountainhead is based on the seminal book by Ayn Rand, directed by King Vidor in 1949 and star’s Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey.

 

This classic story is remixed and juxtaposed with many other cult cinematic moments; from Blade Runner to Metropolis and beyond. The performance contains a rich and diverse collection of audio visual references, incorporate The Light Surgeons's own recent collaborations with internationally renowned architect and designer Ron Arad, as well as contributions from cutting edge experimental 3D animators Lyn Fox.

 

Source: The Light Surgeons' website

 

 

The Z-Axis, found footage, Live Visuals

Reading

VJ: Audio-Visual Art + VJ Culture (2006) edited by D-Fuse. A major change has taken place at dance clubs worldwide: the advent of the VJ. Once the term denoted the presenter who introduced music videos on MTV, but now it defines an artist who creates and mixes video, live and in sync to music, whether at dance clubs and raves or art galleries and festivals. This book is an in-depth look at the artists at the forefront of this dynamic audio-visual experience. (Laurence King Publishing)

‘vE-”jA: Art + Technology of Live Audio-Video (2006) by Xarene Eskander is a global snapshot of an exploding genre of tech-art performance: VJing and live audio-video. The book covers 40 international artists with 400+ colour images and 50+ movies and clips on an accompanying DVD and web downloads. (VJ Book)

The Art of Projectionism (2007) by Frederick Baker (in German) sets out the principles behind his use of projectors in the film making process. He defines a projectionist school of filmmaking and media art. In this publication he also presented Ambient film, a surround experience that can be shown in specially developed cinemas. (Wikipedia)

Links

 

SEE ALSO

Christian Ernest Marclay (*1955) is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer. Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramophone records and turntables as musical instruments to create sound collages, Christian Marclay is, in the words of critic Thom Jurek, perhaps the "unwitting inventor of turntablism." His own use of turntables and records, beginning in the late 1970s, was developed independently of but roughly parallel to hip hop's use of the instrument. (Wikipedia)

Paul Sharits (2008) edited by Yann Beauvais. Known primarily for his experimental cinema and pictorial works, Paul Sharits developed an oeuvre that evolved around two central themes: one, closely related to music and the world of abstraction, the other, within the psychological and emotional arena of the figurative. This complete monograph, drawn from a recent exhibition, explores the connections between these two practices, and in addition provides a general introduction to a remarkable body of work. Illustrated throughout, the monograph also includes several essays, texts by Paul Sharits and interviews. (les presses du réel)

4youreye was established in the early 1990s and is based on the Rave, Ambient and Club culture of that decade. 4youreye have, since their creation over 10 years ago, not only made a name for themselves in their own country but can also look back on manys uccessful international performances. The 2 man Crew stand for fast hard cuts and unconventional screen sequences taking images that we believe to know from old viewing habits, out of their original context to then generate them into a completely new context. That, what music tries its best to express, is portrayed here in always changing picture collages. (4youreye)

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)

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)