Audio - Visualising

Situationist International

a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events.

"the concrete construction of momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality."

1950’s-60’s

Situations - To break the spectator’s passivity towards the spectacle

Focused around the development of several Club nights in New York

"If you had been in New York City in February 1966, you might have been one of a thousand people who received a flyer in the mail advertising 'Andy Warhol Up-Tight' at the Film-Makers Cinematheque on West 41st Street... a combination of films by Andy Warhol, lights by Danny Williams, music by The Velvet Underground and Nico, dancing by Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick, slides and film projections by Paul Morrissey and Warhol,

This is my party and it’s freaking me out

New York: Andy Warhol & Exploding plastic inevitable.

Bruce Conner

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/3-9tCeFX0Eo/

A MOVIE 1958

REPORT Mid 60’s

MONGOLOID (Devo) 1976

MEA CULPA Eno, Byrne. 1980

First of Ken Kesey & the Prankster’s Acid tests, Described as an un-scripted Spontaneous Multimedia happening. Often withGrateful Dead House Band, The happenings were a ‘Be In’ style freeform party with projections from Kesey & Pranksters exploitation’s on their Bus ‘further’

Ken Kesey & The Merry Pranksters

• 1969: Nam June Paik

Paik is famed for having said "Television has been attacking us all our lives, now we can attack it back".

Paik’s statement should not be interpreted only on one level: he was not proposing that video art would destroy, replace or simply be an alternative to television.

Paik and many other artists were also deeply interested in occupying the broadcast space of

television as an expanded arena for art.

1970’s - Video gaga

• Scratch Video was a British video art movement that emerged in the early-mid 1980s. It was characterised by the use of found footage, fast-cutting and multi-layered rhythms. It is significant in that, as a form of outsider art, it challenged many of the establishment assumptions of broadcast TV - as well of those of gallery-bound video art.

• Scratch video arose in opposition to broadcast TV, as (anti-)artists attempted to deal critically and directly with the impact of mass communications.

• Their goal was to develop new theories and practices regarding visuals, music and social ideology (i.e. how to best communicate social messages within the rapidly changing technological environment). Some of those involved described their work as a form of “cultural terrorism” or as a form of “anti-art”.

• Situationist concept of ‘detournement’ (turning around the meaning of an established concept)

• ‘Subvertising’ - spoof adverts (subvertisments) or satire of commercials. Either through the creation of a new advert or subverting an already made one.https://www.adbusters.org/gallery/spoofads

Study after Veåzquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X. Francis Bacon 1953

Portrait of Innocent X. Diego Velazquez. 1953

• The House parties of the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s shared parallels with the sixties.

• The starting years of club culture, 1988-1991, coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tianamen Square Student Protest and gave birth to the Love Parade, Mayday and Techno. The House and Techno scene exploded as a social force throughout the world.

• The mid-ninties: commercialism & escapism supersedes the idealism of the first generation.

• The new VJ was without politics. In the spirit of the House scene people in the mid 90s wanted to create beautiful images and create positive icons that are uplifting.

• This was a movement about feeling, about friendship and fun rather than serious thought. People demanded more than the disco glitter ball of the 70s, a few flashing lights or liquid slides. They wanted a total experience, colourful images that bounced on the screens that hung at the side of the dance floor, multiple coloured lasers, fire eaters, magicians, exiting live acts and MDMA.

Club Culture

• The second half of the ‘90s: The different styles in dance music produced many different styles of DJ & VJ.

• Many people abandoned the large (many commercial) raves to start their own experiments, leaving inclusiveness for constraint and control, but making their own decisions.

• The background of the VJ had also changed. The pioneers in the VJ scene were experimental filmmakers, people from lighting companies or artists who had been trained in art academies.

• The second generation of VJ’s formed collectives with people from different traditions. Some had their roots in computer programming while others in graphic design, film directing or sound.

• These collectives were the perfect example of the cross-disciplinary collaborations that found their heyday in the mid and late 1990s.

• Many VJ’s started editing their material live on a computer which could change and recompose the material in many ways. Some use found footage and other film material to tell their story others produce their own footage. The way of working very much reflects the 1990s post-modern culture that was reworking, recombining and analysing already existing media material to make sense of the world.

• Coldcut & Hexstatic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLu7p9bTJ84

• Etienne De Crecy - Exyzt VJ Crew: Exyzt VJ Crew: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzil8S7tUeY

• Anti VJ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIT6PGWzGHo

EBN Emergency Broadcast Network

Video montageSampling Creating new narratives

Coldcut

Cut up samples

DJ culture - making that visual

Created ‘VJamm’ VJ Software

With HEX, pioneered new multi media hybrids

Audiovisual jamming

Interactive CDRoms

HEXRobert Pepperell, Mile VismanMatt Black, Jonathan More

UVA United Visual Artists www.uva.co.uk

• D-Fuse: http://www.dfuse.com

• Anti VJ: http://www.antivj.com

• Eclectic Method: http://www.eclecticmethod.net

• Hexstatic: http://www.vimeo.com/hexstatic

• Onedotzero: http://www.onedotzero.com

• United visual Artists: http://www.uva.co.uk

VJ’s

http://turbulence.org/blog/Networked Performance:

Further Reading

http://www.generatorx.no/Art from Code:

http://cont3xt.netCont3xt.net

http://www.vjtheory.netVJ Theory.net

http://remixtheory.net/Remix Theory

Creative Applicationshttp://www.creativeapplications.net/

VJ Links

• http://www.audiovisualizers.com/

• Vjtube: http://www.vjtube.net

• VJ Forum: http://vjforums.com/

• http://www.vjtv.net/

• http://www.vjheaven.com/

• http://www.archive.org/

• http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/gallery/home/archives.do

generative visualisation & Data

Toshio Iwai

• Japanese interactive media and installation artist who has also created a number of commercial video games. In addition he has worked in television, music performance, museum design and digital musical instrument design.

Ryoji Ikeda

• Japanese sound artist who lives and works in New York City.

• Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing.

• Rhythmically, Ikeda's music is highly imaginative, exploiting beat patterns and, at times, using a variety of discrete tones and noise to create the semblance of a drum machine.

http://www.ryojiikeda.com/

John Maeda

• graphic designer, computer scientist, university professor, and author.

• http://plw.media.mit.edu/people/maeda/

• http://www.maedastudio.com/index.php

• http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/maeda.html

Pure Data

• a graphical programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for the creation of interactive computer music and multimedia works.

• Pd is an open source project and has a large developer base working on new extensions to the program

• Pd is very similar in scope and design to Puckette's original Max program (developed while he was at IRCAM), and is to some degree interoperable with Max/MSP

• Dataflow programming languages. In such languages, functions or "objects" are linked or "patched" together in a graphical environment which models the flow of the control and audio.

http://puredata.info

Processing• is "a programming language and integrated development

environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities", which aims to teach the basics of computer programming in a visual context, and to serve as the foundation for electronic sketchbooks.

• The language builds on the graphical capabilities of the Java programming language

http://processing.org

http://ejohn.org/blog/overview-of-processing/

http://www.vimeo.com/658158

http://andybest.net/

http://vimeo.com/2712195

Arduino

http://www.vimeo.com/7443677

http://www.vimeo.com/9928343

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA3AUjyZgps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2840MIlfRPc

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).

http://www.pachube.com/

Data Visualisation• Data visualization is the study of the visual representation

of data, meaning "information which has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information"

• Creating images that communicate clearly out of often impenetrable data

http://www.visualcomplexity.com

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

Linkage

http://turbulence.org/blog/Networked Performance:

http://www.generatorx.no/Art from Code:

Creative Applicationshttp://www.creativeapplications.net/

Processing http://www.processing.org

Max MSP http://cycling74.com/