Introduction & Overview
- Course structure & expectations
- A note about software and tools
- A slightly different grading system
What are audio visual environments?
Audio visual environments combine sound and light for expressive and/or exploratory purposes. Their coherence is both technical (combining aural and visual modes) and poetic (the whole is more than the sum of its parts). The subject matter of this course is formally broad, merging perspectives and techniques from film, music, sculpture, dance, design, and programming. We start with fixed screen-based projects but there will be opportunities to work outside of the traditional speaker/screen frames as well. The challenge is to push past your comfort zones to explore the expressive potentials of the audiovisual realm and discover how you might want to work within it.
One place to start is Visual Music–wikipedia’s description of visual music…
Visual music, sometimes called “colour music,” refers to the use of musical structures in visual imagery, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds or music into a related visual presentation. An expanded definition may include the translation of music to painting; this was the original definition of the term, as coined by Roger Fry in 1912 to describe the work of Kandinsky.
Visual music also refers to systems which convert music or sound directly into visual forms, such as film, video or computer graphics, by means of a mechanical instrument, an artist’s interpretation, or a computer. The reverse is applicable also, literally converting images to sound by drawn objects and figures on a film’s soundtrack, in a technique known as drawn or graphical sound… Visual music overlaps to some degree with the history of abstract film, though not all Visual music is abstract.
Paul Friedlander distinguishes between 3 types of visual music…
- Visual Music is a means of converting music to images using a system or set of rules which can be implemented as a machine or computer code.
- Visual Music is a means of expressing music in visual form requiring the active involvement of an artist, designer or director to interpret the music and find the means to express it visually.
- Visual music is about creating visual relationships which change over time.
Let’s take a look at a few examples with these descriptions in mind…