[Nettime-nl] [Sonic Acts] Sonic Light 2003 programme

The ninth edition of the Sonic Acts festival will be held in Paradiso and De Balie under the name Sonic Light 2003. The festival will comprise a week of film presentations, a three-day conference, a small exhibition and three evenings of live music and light projections in a space specially designed for this purpose - the 'Sonic Light Box'. The central theme of the festival is the fascination held by artists for the creative possibilities offered by giving musical form to light and space.

The vision of a 'music for the eye' is centuries old and forms an important undercurrent in the recent history of art and the new media: from the construction of the first colour organs, light sculptures and the first use of coloured lighting in theatre, through abstract film animation and synthetic video images, to the design of interactive software to generate light and sound. The idea of a musical light art to be presented in an environment specially designed for that purpose becomes topical every time a new visual medium appears on the horizon.

Among the present generation of computer artists a new type of visual music is being created which can be performed live or made specially for the Internet.

These 'light environments' would be inconceivable without some form of immersive sound. For centuries composers have dreamt of being able to compose and articulate a truly spatial kind of music. With the arrival of electronic sound reproduction this dream received new impetus from technology, which has led to the stereophonic and surround systems which can now be found in most living rooms. In electronic music it has become possible to minutely compose the spatial aspects of sound by working with quadraphonic, hexaphonic (Boulez), octophonic (Stockhausen) and dodecaphonic (Humon) loudspeaker arrangements. Recent initiatives, like Naut Humon's Recombinant Media Labs, encourage the new generation of sound artists and electronic music producers to further investigate the huge potential offered by a new spatial form of music.

Film programme

OpFilm No. 11: Sonic Light 2003

The OpFilm programme centres on three themes: the early experiments with electronic images for 'experimental television', the work of a number of filmmakers central to abstract filmmaking over the past fifty years, and the relationship between film and kinetic art.

The programme will also include two science-fiction films with special effects by two abstract filmmakers: Oskar Fischinger and Jordan Belson. The programme includes several unique screenings of films that are very rarely shown, especially the programmes on the work of Jordan Belson, Nicolas Sch�ffer and Pierre Schaeffer.

Four video works will be shown continuously during the festival projected on the facade of De Balie from dusk to midnight as part of De Balie's ongoing 'Straal' project.

Groupe de Recherche Images - Pierre Schaeffer

Fri.14 - Wed.26, dusk
'Straal' - Bainbridge, Casady, Lia, Scroggins

Thu.13, 20.00h
Illuminating Music
Dan Sandin, Bill Etra, Vasulka's, and others

'Direct Videosynthesis' involves making images by directly generating the electronic signal fed to a television tube. This kind of work was one of the first forms of video-art and provided a springboard for later celebrities such as Steina and Woody Vasulka, Gary Hill and Nam June Paik. To produce these images special video-synthesizers were built, often by the artists themselves, as in the case of Steven Beck, Bill Etra and Dan Sandin. These machines were installed in experimental television studios where research was being done into new forms of television. This programme focuses on those artists who considered video-synthesis to be the future of the medium, often as a means of producing images in real-time, not unlike a musician working in a recording studio.

Spiral 5 PTL (with documentary)
Dan Sandin, 1982, 15', video.
Conception
Steven Beck, 1972, 6', video.
Illuminated Music III
Steven Beck, 1973, 15', video.
Abstractions on a Bedsheet
Bill Etra, 1975 , 6', video.
Telc
Steina and Woody Vasulka, 1974, 5', video.
Noisefields
Steina and Woody Vasulka, 1974, 12', video.
Before the Flood
Matthew Schlanger, 1985, 5', video.
Aquarelles
Dean Winkler, Tom Dewitt, Vibeke Sorensen , 1981, 8', video.
Power Spot
Michael Scroggins, 1986, 9', video.

Fri.14, 20.00h
Meditation for the Masses
Steven Beck, Eric Siegel, Skip Sweeney

This programme focuses on the more psychedelic aspects of synthetic video. A recurrent theme here is the idea of 'feedback'. Video-feedback - recording the image from a monitor and feeding it back in - was one of the fundamental techniques used for producing synthetic images, and this principle was often compared to the feedback between artist and audience. Skip Sweeney explains that he 'plays' video-feedback just as a guitarist plays sound feedback, and that he detests 'hot shit video artist rhetoric'. Eric Siegel puts it this way: "It is the instrument of the New Television; the growing tendency of more artistic abstract television performed by beautiful enchanting people.

Symphony of the Planets
Eric Siegel, 1968, 10:20 , video.
Union
Steven Beck, 1975, 9', video.
Are you Experienced?
Steven Beck, 1982, 7', video.
Voodoo Child
Steven Beck, 1982, 7', video.

Sat.15, 20.00h
Absolute Classics
Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye and others.

When film was still a new medium many artists speculated about what would be the ultimate new film art. In 'absolute film', a term coined in the twenties, the combination of light and movement was seen as the essence of film. This programme includes a number of classic works from that early period, such as 'Opus 1' - the oldest preserved abstract film - as well as 'Allegretto' and 'Colour Box', films that should be part of everyone's culture. Attention will be devoted to the relationship between this movement and movements in other art forms, such as the Bauhaus (Moholy-Nagy, Richter, Lee), American Secessionist Photography (Strand, Steiner), the work of musical theoretician Joseph Schillinger (Bute) and with the beginnings of kinetic art (Lye, Vavra).

Opus I
Walter Ruttmann, 1920, 4', 35mm.
Manhatta
Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler, 1921, 9', 16mm.
Filmstudie
Hans Richter, 1926, 5', 16mm.
R1
Oskar Fischinger, 1927, 7', 16mm.
H20
Ralph Steiner, 1929, 14', 16mm.
Svetlo Pronik� Tmou
Otakar Vavra & Frantisek Pilat, 1930, 7', 35mm.
Lichtspiel Schwarz-Weiss-Grau
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1930, 6', 16mm.
Studie nr.8
Oskar Fischinger, 1932, 5', 16mm.
Rhythm in Light
Mary Ellen Bute, 1934, 5', 16mm.
Colour Box
Len Lye, 1935, 4', 16mm.
Allegretto
Oskar Fischinger, 1936, 3 min.
Swinging the Lambeth Walk
Len Lye, 1939, 4', 16mm.
1941
Francis Lee, 1941, 6', 16mm.
Colour Sequence
Dwinell Grant, 1943, 3', 16mm.

Sun.16, 20.00h
Motion Graphics
John & James Whitney

Inspired by the work of Oskar Fischinger the two brothers John and James Whitney plunged themselves into making abstract films. John had a background in music composition, James was a painter and these worlds complemented each other wonderfully when they were making their 'Abstract Film Exercises' in the forties. For these films they built special devices that enabled them to animate purely synthetic images and sounds. In their later work they went their own ways: James made a few films based on Buddhist and alchemical symbolism in which he combined direct treatment of the film material with highly complex point animations. John developed several animation techniques and was the first artist invited by IBM to develop computer animation. Based on Pythagorean ideas about harmonic ratios, he developed a coherent concept for how to generate visual patterns and sounds using the computer.

Film exercises 1-5
John & James Whitney, 1943-1944, 21', 16mm.
Celery Stalks at Midnight,
John Whitney, 1951-1953, 3', 16mm.
Yantra,
James Whitney, 1950-1957, 8', 16mm.
Lapis,
James Whitney, 1963-1966, 10', 16mm.
Experiments in Motion Graphics,
John Whitney, 1968, 13', 16mm.
Osaka 1.2.3,
John Whitney, 1970, 3', 16mm.
Arabesque,
John Whitney, 1975, 8', 16mm.

Mon.17, 20.00h
Text of Light
Stan Brakhage

'All that is, is light', is the quote from Johannes Scotus Erigena, an Irish monk from the ninth century, which starts the film that Brakhage considers to be one of the most important in the whole of his prolific output. The film initially began as a portrait of a millionaire and evolved into a meticulous study of the worlds hidden in his crystal ashtray. In the delicate reflections and refractions of light, Brakhage found analogies for processes taking place everywhere, it opened up a way of seeing for him that does not try to appropriate whatever enters the field of vision. For Brakhage this film shows how everything comes out of light taking shape: the things around us, our visual impressions and our thoughts. He dedicated the film to Jim Davis, the man who was the first to show Brakhage the 'spark of refracted light', and it premiered a week before Davis died.

The Text of Light
Stan Brakhage, 1974, 75', 16mm.

Tue.18, 20.00h
Turn, Turn, Turn
Jud Yalkut

Jud Yalkut was the man with the camera in New York in the sixties, when kinetic sculpture and projections were gradually emerging from the underground into the official art world. From 1965 he was for a few years part of the American collective USCO, a group of artists and technicians that gave performances and built environments. In this period Yalkut made a number of abstract films in which the kinetic machines and projections of USCO figure as visual material. Other films he made are more documentary and show the context in which USCO navigated. He also made films with The Grateful Dead playing live, with the first exhibitions of lightsculptures by Julio Le Parc and Nicolas Sch�ffer, with early multi-media performances by Aldo Tambellini, Jackie Cassen, Rudy Stern, Timothy Leary, and in collaboration with Nam June Paik.

Turn, Turn, Turn
Jud Yalkut, 1965-66, 10', 16mm.
Diffraction Film
Jud Yalkut, 1965, 10', 16mm.
Le Parc
Jud Yalkut, 1966, 4', 16mm.
Moondial Film
Jud Yalkut, 1966, 4', 16mm.
China Cat Sunflower
Jud Yalkut, 1973, 4', 16mm.
Us
Jud Yalkut, 1966-2000, 16', 16mm.
Us Down By The Riverside
Jud Yalkut, 1966, 3', 16mm.
D.M.T.
Jud Yalkut, 1966, 3', 16mm.
Electronic Fables
Jud Yalkut, Nam June Paik, 1971, 9', 16mm.
Beatles Electroniques
Jud Yalkut, Nam June Paik, 1966-69, 3', 16mm.
Electronic Moon No. 2
Jud Yalkut, Nam June Paik, 1969, 4', 16mm.

Wed.19, 20.00h
Luminodynamisme
Nicolas Sch�ffer
Nicolas Sch�ffer was a pioneer of kinetic art and was the first artist to make interactive sculptures. He himself termed his moving art 'cybernetic art' because, for him, the essence of the work was not the mere fact of movement, but the composition of that movement, the program controlling it. He was a visionary artist with far-reaching ideas about the future function of art in society and he was disgusted by the bourgeois world of galleries and the art market. Sch�ffer designed many projects for interactive sculptures and for light environments in public spaces, a handful of which have indeed been realized.
In cooperation with several starting film directors he made a number of films based on the shadows and projections of his sculptures. He also made the first experimental video work ever to be broadcast on television, provoking violent reactions from the French audience. The programme consists of films from the personal archive of Sch�ffer and will be introduced by his widow, Eleonore de Lavandeyra-Sch�ffer.

The programme will include at least the following films:
Fer Chaud
Jacques Brissot, 1957, 4', 16mm.
Spatiodynamisme
Tinto Brass, 1958, 6', 16mm.
Mayola
Henri Gruel, 1958, 3', 16mm.
Variations Luminodynamiques 1
Jean Kerchbron, 1961, 15', 16mm.
Le Propre de l'Homme (excerpt)
Claude Lelouch, 1962, approx. 5', 35mm scope.

Thur.20, 20.00h
Through the Looking Glass
Jim Davis, Stan Brakhage

Jim Davis was originally a painter who became more and more interested in working with moving images. He held that in the twentieth century it was no longer possible to make meaningful art using traditional forms such as painting and sculpture. Around 1945 he gave 'light concerts' for friends, showing light reflected and refracted by coloured plastic shapes, and he concluded that these complex and organic projections would live better on film. He made many abstract films until his death in 1974, works he made 'to stimulate interest in hitherto unperceived aspects of the physical universe, in hitherto unrecognized potentialities in the human imagination'.
This programme will be introduced by Robert Haller of Anthology Film Archives in New York.

Writ in Water
Jim Davis, 1955, 8', 16mm.
Becoming
Jim Davis, 1955, 9', 16mm.
Comingled Containers
Stan Brakhage, 1997, 5', 16mm.
Jersey Fall
Jim Davis, 1949-54, 8', 16mm.
Through the Looking Glass
Jim Davis, 1953, 8', 16mm.
Night Music
Stan Brakhage, 1986, 30 sec, 16mm.
Energies
Jim Davis, 1957, 10', 16mm.
Impulses
Jim Davis, 1959, 9', 16mm.
Birds of Paradise

Stan Brakhage, 1999, 3', 16mm.
Death and Transfiguration
Jim Davis, 1961, 10', 16mm.

Fri.21, 20.00h
Light
Jordan Belson

Jordan Belson made films consisting of nebulous, amorphous, and incredibly rich imagery that touches on the narrative while remaining strictly non-verbal. The images conjure up associations with interstellar or microscopic processes and were considered by Belson as visualizations of his inner states.
"A film like Samadhi, for example, is intended to be a real documentary representation, as accurately as it was possible to make, of a real place and a real visual phenomenon that I perceived - just as I'm looking at you right now. Even on a superficial level everyone is willing to grant the existence of what they call phosphenes. OK, now go deeper than those superficial things and allow that there are even deeper levels where visual communication still exists. A new language has to be developed which acknowledges and can speak from that awareness. And I think my kind of work has sort of opened up the means for doing that, a way of doing it which the storytelling film has

neglected. They're just telling the same old thing over and over again, not really trying to break into more expanded areas of awareness or understanding. " (Belson, 1975)

This programme will be introduced by Robert Haller of Anthology Film Archives in New York.

Allures
Jordan Belson, 1961, 9', 16mm.
Re-Entry
Jordan Belson, 1964, 6', 16mm.
Phenomena
Jordan Belson, 1965, 6', 16mm.
Samadhi
Jordan Belson, 1967, 6', 16mm.
World
Jordan Belson, 1970, 7', 16mm.
Light
Jordan Belson, 1973, 8', 16mm.

Fri.21, 21.30h
The Time Travellers
Ib Melchior, Oskar Fischinger

'You are in the future before it happens!' A B-movie filled with gimmicks, one of which is a future 'love machine'. In a sensual environment we see a young woman stroking coloured squares with her fingertips, in this way creating an enchanting play of light and sound. Behind the scenes the images for this machine were produced using a special version of Fischinger's 'Lumigraph'. He invented this blissfully simple device in the fifties to be able to play light in
real-time.

The Time Travellers
Ib Melchior, 1964, 82', 16mm.

Sat.22, 20.00h
The Right Stuff
Philip Kaufmann, Jordan Belson

A classic film about the early years of space travel, with 'special visual creations' by Jordan Belson. In the cloud-like effects and abstract play with fiery sparks we can clearly recognize the hand of the master.

The Right Stuff
Philip Kaufmann, 1983, 193', 35mm.

Sun.23, 20.00h
Groupe de Recherche Images
Pierre Schaeffer

Pierre Schaeffer is famous for being the founder of the 'Musique Concr�te' movement and is now regarded by many to be one of the precursors in thinking about the concept of 'sampling'. Besides being a composer and theorist, he was also the head of the 'Groupe de Recherche Images' of the French broadcasting corporation, a department doing research into future forms of television and where about 1000 experimental films were made. Most of these films were never shown on television and are now locked away in a state archive (as if dangerous to mankind). The films shown in this programme come from the personal collection of Pierre Schaeffer. They comprise two beautiful cinematic essays on the relationship between image and sound, two very different works produced by the GRI and finally, 'La Tri�dre Fertile', a film version, based on oscilloscope images, of the sounds in Schaeffer's tape composition with the same name.

The programme will be introduced by Sylvie Dallet, director of the 'Centre d'�tudes et de Recherche Pierre Schaeffer' in Paris.

Essais Visuels sur les Objets Sonores
Pierre Schaeffer, 1966, 19', 16mm.
Etude aux Allures
Raymond Hains, Jacques Villegl� 1950-54, 5', 16mm.
Narcissus Echo
Peter Foldes ,1972, 6', 16mm.
Dialogue du Son et de l'Image,
(various artists), 1966, 19', 16mm.
La Tri�dre Fertile
Pierre Schaeffer, 1975, 38', 16mm.

Fri.14 - Wed.26, dusk
'Straal'
Bainbridge, Casady, Lia, Scroggins

A programme consisting of four works by artists who will attend Sonic Light. These works will be projected in a loop, every evening from dusk to midnight on the side facade of De Balie, on a screen overlooking the Leidseplein, the centre of nightlife in Amsterdam.

Sonic Light 2003 Conference

The conference part of Sonic Light will take place on 21st, 22nd and 23rd February in De Balie. The subject of the Sonic Acts conference last year was 'The Art of Programming', this year it is to be 'Composing Light, Articulating Space'. The conference gives a broad overview of the art of 'composed light': the shaping in time of light and colour in a way which is comparable to the way sound is given form in music. A large part of the conference will consist of presentations by artists who will explain something of the background to their work, the techniques they use or may have devised and will include presentations of fragments of their work. Another part of the conference will comprise more theoretical and historical presentations which place present-day developments in a broader context.

To bring some order to the web of ideas and influences linking the various contributions, the conference has been loosely structured around three themes, coinciding with the three days. The first day will centre on the links between light art, the visual arts and architecture. The second day will be about strategies for making image and sound compositions, focusing on computer animations in film and for the web. The last day will deal with various approaches to perform light and abstract images in real-time.

During the three days of the conference there will be a modest exhibition in De Balie, consisting of two works. An amazing '3d-lumia' box by Earl Reiback will be shown, a machine which produces refined optically 'real' images that appear to float in the space before it. There will also be a presentation on dvd of the reconstruction of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack's 'Farbenlichtspiele', made in 2000 by a Viennese team of performers headed by Corinne Schweizer and Peter B�hm.

Fri 21, 13:00h
Fred Collopy - The Contributions of Painters to the Development of Visual Music
Earl Reiback - My Work in Lumia
Eleonore de Lavandeyra-Sch�ffer - Luminodynamism in the work of Nicolas Sch�ffer

Fri 21, 16:00h
Cees Ronda - New Technologies for Illumination
Seth Riskin - Light Dance
Paul Friedlander - 3-D Light Forms

Fri 21, 20:00h
Robert Haller - The Films of Jordan Belson (film programme)

Sat 22, 13:00h
Frans Evers - A Dancer had a Dance: Synesthesia and the Unity of the Arts
Sylvie Dallet - Groupe de Recherche Images
Larry Cuba - Form = Movement

Sat 22, 16:00h
Bart Vegter - A Vast Space with a Narrow Entrance
Chris Casady - Instant Visual Music around the World
Peter Luining - The Emergence of the Sound Engine

Sun 22, 13:00h
Pascal Rousseau - Light Experiments in the Beginnings of Abstraction. An Archaeology of Participative Art
Peter Stasny - Light Art at the Bauhaus, the 'Farbenlichtspiele' of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack
Michael Scroggins - Absolute Animation Through Improvisation

Sun 22, 16:00h
Benton Bainbridge - Try This at Home: Analog Video Synthesis
Fred Collopy - An Instrument for Performing Real-Time Abstract Animations
Golan Levin - Interface Metaphors for Audiovisual Performance Systems

Fri 21, 13:00h

Fred Collopy - The Contributions of Painters to the Development of Visual Music

In this talk Collopy will describe some of the early contributions of abstract painters to the development of an art of light, as well as some of their theories about the relationship of painting to music. The artists considered will include Leopold Survage, Morgan Russell, Stanton Macdonald Wright, Paul Klee, Gyorgy Kepes, Piet Mondrian, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Fred Collopy was a former visiting scientist at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and teaches technology and design at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School. His web site at rhythmiclight.com details the history and theoretical foundations of visual music.

Earl Reiback - My Work in Lumia

Reiback will present his 'lumia' work and explain his methods and techniques.

After an initial career as a nuclear physicist, Earl Reiback turned to kinetic light art through an effort to improve the environment in which he was living. His light boxes were quickly picked up by the contemporary art scene and were termed 'lumia' after the work of Thomas Wilfred who independently had been doing similar things and became a close friend. Outside the art world he did large-scale projects for light environments in restaurants, for interior design, as backdrops for fashion shows and for the Electric Circus, the first discotheque in history.

Eleonore de Lavandeyra-Sch�ffer - Luminodynamism in the work of Nicolas Sch�ffer

Nicolas Sch�ffer had an amazing output of visionary ideas about art and the future of mankind. He started as a painter but understood around 1948 that in our present society it was no longer possible to create valid art using the traditional 'beaux-arts' media. He turned to making art using the immaterial substances of space, light and time, which led him to formulate Spatiodynamism, Luminodynamism and Chronodynamism, respectively. He made many moving, interactive and programmed sculptures, experimental cybernetic shows, films, projects for urban planning and published a number of books.

Eleonore de Lavandeyra-Sch�ffer abandoned her own career as an ethnomusicologist and Indian music teacher to take care of her husband and his work when he became partly paralysed in the last years of his life. After his death she has continued to preserve and promote his work.

Fri 21, 16:00h

Cees Ronda - New Technologies for Illumination

Cees Ronda will give an introduction on the physics underlying - familiar light sources and on the relationship between how light is generated and the way colours can be reproduced. In the second part of the talk he will discuss new developments in illumination from a technical research and development perspective. He will elucidate the basic physical processes and interactions leading to the emission of light in the new light sources, which differ quite extensively from the light sources and illumination systems used nowadays. Ronda will also discuss recent developments in LED technology, in colour variable light and give a survey of future technologies.

Cees Ronda is professor 'Materials Science' at the Ornstein Laboratoryof Utrecht University and works for the Philips Research Laboratories in Aachen as research fellow.

Seth Riskin - Light Dance

Riskin's work involves physical movement with the additional element of light instruments attached to his body, carefully aimed and adjusted to produce space-defining effects. The silent performances, known as Light Dance, surround viewers with fluid architectures of light. The talk will set the Light Dance art form within a broad historical context of human expression through the medium of light. Emphasis will be placed on the conjunction of the body with light -- the light-body -as a highly charged, trans-cultural image that is key to an "anthropology" of light.

A former U.S. national champion gymnast, Seth Riskin originated Light Dance at the M.I.T. Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He has been performing internationally and has been conductingresearch that led him to India to study Hindu ritual fire dances. Currently Seth is a Research Fellow at the M.I.T. Center for Advanced Visual Studies and Director of the M.I.T. Light Symposium 2003, a forum on new light technologies, emerging visual culture and the role of art.

Paul Friedlander - 3-D Light Forms

Friedlander will describe how he first became interested in kinetic art and began to develop an interest in light sculpture. He will talk about his previous career in stage lighting and his subsequent quest to create a means of 3-D projection, and how this led to the invention of Chromastrobic Light. He will recount the discovery of the gyrating forms that blend harmony and chaos which are so characteristic of his work. He will then show how these lightforms developed from a desk- top sized novelty to light sculptures on a monumental scale.

Paul Friedlander was raised in Cambridge on a diet of relativity and cosmology, and was an aspiring rocket scientist and interstellar propulsion expert. He metamorphosed to become a stage lighting designer, computer artist and light sculptor. His sculptures have been shown widely all around the globe. He was also an award winner at 'Lightforms '98' in New York.

Fri 21, 20:00h

Robert Haller - The Films of Jordan Belson (film programme)

Like Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson approached film with one foot in Eastern religion and one in modern science. His works fall into several phases: the 1940's, the period 1950-62, and a third phase that began in 1964 with 'Re-entry'. Robert Haller will introduce a programme which includes the following films by Belson: Allures (1961), Re-Entry (1964), Phenomena (1965), Samadhi (1967), World (1970) and Light (1973).

Frans Evers - A Dancer had a Dance: Synesthesia and the Unity of the Arts

Evers will talk about his work in experimental research, ranging from perceptual psycho-physics to the study of synesthetic concepts in experimental art. He will discuss his collaborative work with Larry Marks in a cross-modal research programme, which showed strong perceptual interactions between auditory pitch and loudness with visual brightness and sharpness of visual form. Besides this, he will discuss some of the art projects based on the study of historical synesthetic models by Castel (1725), Scheuer (1798), Wagner (1850), Kandinsky (1911), Sch�nberg(1910), and Mondrian(1922), etc.

Frans Evers has been head of the Interfaculty Image and Sound of the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague since 1989, and was one of the founders of the Sonic Acts festival in 1994. Prior to and alongside to his work as an innovator in art education, he studied synesthesia at the University of Amsterdam and, further to receiving a Fulbright Award, was able to continue his research at Yale University.

Sylvie Dallet - Pierre Schaeffer and the Groupe de Recherche Images

Pierre Schaeffer is mostly known for his pioneering work as a composer and theorist of 'Musique Concr�te'. Much less known is the fact that he was also a profound thinker about mass media, multimedia and about the relationship between image and sound. For a number of years he was not only the head of the 'Groupe de Recherches Musicales' but also of the 'Groupe de Recherche Images' and other research groups devoted to technology and literature. These were experimenting with two innovative approaches: the transition from the classical Arts to the recording Arts , and the critical practice of the 'observer/observed'.

Sylvie Dallet is a philosopher and historian. She was chosen by Schaeffer to initiate reflection on his work and to preserve his archives and consequently, since 1995, she has been the director of the 'Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche Pierre Schaeffer'. She was appointed professor at the University of Marne la Vall�e to start a research and study programme devoted to contemporary art in relation to new technologies, which began in 2002. She has also regularly published essays on cinema and political history.

Larry Cuba - Form = Movement

In the pure form of abstraction that Cuba pursues, visual perception is paramount. But because the images are generated via algorithms written in computer language, there is a paradox in trying to use words to describe images for which words do not exist. He will present and discuss his work on film 'Two Space', '3/78' and 'Calculated Movements' and will reveal his current projects.

Larry Cuba is widely recognized as a pioneer in the use of computers in animation art. Producing his first computer animation in 1974, Cuba was at the forefront of the computer-animation artists considered the "second generation" - those who directly followed the visionaries of the sixties: John Whitney Sr., Stan Vanderbeek and Lillian Schwartz. He is the founder of the iotaCenter in Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the art of light and movement.

Sat 22, 16:00h

Bart Vegter - A Vast Space with a Narrow Entrance

Bart Vegter has developed his own algorithms and his own software to make his most recent abstract films. In this presentation he will talk about the obstacles and discoveries when using computers to make moving images and he will explain something about the making of two of his recent computer films: 'NACHT-LICHT' and 'FOREST-VIEWS'. Sketches, image tests and fragments of these films will be shown, 'FOREST-VIEWS' will be shown in its entirety.

Bart Vegter has a background in physics and electronics. He started to make films after coming into contact with the Free Academy Psychopolis in The Hague and many of the people involved, such as Frans Zwartjes, Peter Rubin, Paul de Mol and Jacques Verbeek. Since 1981 he has made seven abstract films using a variety of techniques.

Chris Casady - Instant Visual Music around the World

Chris Casady is animating with Macromedia Flash aiming to re-invigorate the field of abstract animations begun by the early non-objective painters of the 20th century. Many of them were interested in film and made various attempts to animate their visions with technology of the time; tedious hand animation. Today, the ability to easily place moving coloured images and sound in front of eyeballs around the world instantly, is an opportunity too compelling to ignore. We owe it to those who did it the hard way, to do it the easy way. Chris will share his experiments.

Chris Casady is a 'traditional' effects animator with an early training in visual music at Cal-Arts in Los Angeles. Working from his studio in Hollywood he has earned two Clio awards for his work in commercials and directed an animated music video for the Beastie Boys. His film credits include the first three Star Wars films, TRON, Beetlejuice, Airplane! and Tank Girl. His animated film "Pencil Dance" won awards at animation festivals in France, Italy, Japan and Canada and he was a five-time speaker at the FlashForward International conference.

Peter Luining - The Emergence of the Sound Engine

From the early beginnings of the Internet Peter Luining was interested in combining images and sounds interactively, and in his talk he will describe how his work evolved in relation to the development of computers and the Internet. With computers turning into multimedia machines and the Internet becoming faster, a new type of audiovisual work emerged: the sound engine. This is a small piece of software which allows the user to interact with images that are linked to sounds, thus making sound-image compositions possible. Luining will present his own sound engines, discuss some of the ideas behind them and show how they have evolved to fit different contexts.

After his contemporary philosophy study, Peter Luining became active in the Amsterdam vj-scene, made 3d-animations and videoclips. In 1995 the character of his work changed dramatically when he discovered the net and Luining first won international recognition with his work "Clickclub", at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. Since 1997 Luinings' work has turned towards a kind of minimalism, while continuing his earlier research on the dynamics of the net.

Sun 23, 13:00h

Pascal Rousseau - Light Experiments in the Beginnings of Abstraction.
An Archaeology of Participative Art

Rousseau will give an analysis of the first experiments with colour music and light shows in Europe and the United States, focusing on the idea of collective participation and popular communion in the new era of the modern age. He will approach this early history of light art by discussing the mystical and religious motives of the earliest light artists and the electrical metaphor of music as a magnetic and electrical fluid. He will draw parallels between these ideas from the early period and the avant-garde in the 1920s, the 'happenings' and environments of the 1960s, and the new emphasis on collectivity in today's lounge phenomenon.

Pascal Rousseau is professor of contemporary art at the University of Tours and also works as a curator. He curated the exhibition "Robert Delaunay. From Impressionism to Abstraction" in the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1999 and is currently preparing a large exhibition about "The Origins of Abstraction" for the Mus�e d'Orsay in Paris in 2003. He has published several articles on synesthesia in the first stages of abstraction.

Peter Stasny - Light Art at the Bauhaus, the 'Farbenlichtspiele' of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack

The 'Farbenlichtspiele' by the Bauhaus student Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack resulted from investigations into the interaction of colour and form as well as from a shadow play by fellow student Kurt Schwerdtfeger in 1922. Their first public performance at the Bauhaus in 1923 was the starting point for Hirschfeld-Mack to become an important pioneer of the moving coloured image. The further development of the 'Farbenlichtspiele' towards mechanization ended abruptly in 1940 when Hirschfeld-Mack was deported to Australia from England, his country of exile. In this lecture Stasny will outline the history of the 'Farbenlichtspiele' and discuss their origins in the fundamental aesthetic research conducted at the Bauhaus, which also included direct and reflected light.

Peter Stasny did his thesis research on the work of Hirschfeld-Mack and curated the Hirschfeld-Mack exhibitions at the Museum for Modern Art in Bolzano, the J�disches Museum in Vienna and the J�disches Museum in Frankfurt in 2000. He teaches design science and design history in Linz, St. P�lten and Vienna.

Michael Scroggins - Absolute Animation Through Improvisation

"The approach to creating absolute animation that I have found to be the most successful draws upon the power inherent in real-time improvisation. A change made to the image creates a particular affect, this affect then influences the choice made in creating the next change, and so on. From my earliest experiences finger painting in the 1950s, doing liquid light projection in the 1960s, working with video synthesizers in the 1970s, playing video studio production switchers in the 1980s, to planning immersive VR performances in the 1990s, improvisation has been an essential factor in discovering affective compositional structures."

Michael Scroggins is a pioneer in the field of performance animation. His absolute animation works have been widely exhibited internationally. His most recent work investigates the potential of gesture capture in creating real-time absolute animation in immersive VR.

Sun 23, 16:00h

Benton Bainbridge - Try This at Home: Analog Video Synthesis

Bainbridge will give a demonstration of his low-tech version of video synthesis, showing his tools, explaining his backgrounds and ideas. He will talk about his fascination with the pioneers of direct video synthesis and show fragments of his installation work and his work as a VJ.

Benton-C Bainbridge draws upon a youth misspent playing with fire, food and electronics to compose moving pictures for stage performance, generative installation and fixed media dissemination. He was a founding member of several video performance collectives in New York, such as 77 Hz, The Poool and NNeng. His collaborations include work with Bill Etra and David Linton's UnityGain.

Fred Collopy - An Instrument for Performing Real-Time Abstract Animations

Imager is an instrument that permits painters to play images in the way that musicians play with sounds. Its design, which organizes controllers and modulators to manipulate colours, forms, and motions in real-time, will be discussed.

Fred Collopy designed his first version of Imager for the Apple II computer in 1977. Since then he has implemented it on several platforms and his work has been presented at SIGGRAPH, the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA), the Academy of Management, and numerous universities and shows.

Golan Levin - Interface Metaphors for Audiovisual Performance Systems

This talk presents an overview of interface metaphors for the real-time and simultaneous performance of dynamic imagery and sound, with special attention to the metaphor of an inexhaustible, infinitely variable, time-based, audiovisual substance which can be gesturally created, deposited, manipulated and deleted in a free-form, non-diagrammatic image space. With the goal of realizing instrumental systems through which the unison of sound and image could be tightly linked, commensurately malleable, and deeply plastic, a series of examples which make use of this metaphor will be presented and discussed.

The small auditorium of Paradiso will be dominated by Paul Friedlander's kinetic light sculptures 'Wave Equation' and 'Hypersphere'. Students f the Interfaculty Image and Sound from The Hague will present a daily programme of light and sound performances here, DJs Christian Vogel (Friday) and KidGoesting (Saturday) will provide a pleasant setting later in the night. Other light objects and luminous interventions by the students of the Interfaculty Image and Sound will find other places in the building of Paradiso.

In the 'Sonic Light Box' all light performances and projections will take place on a gigantic light-object, as wide as it is high, splitting the main Paradiso auditorium in two. This object can serve as a projection screen but, more importantly, emits light of continuously changing colour and intensity. It will be the sole source of light for all events, together with the luminous and mobile roof hovering above it.

The auditorium will also have no front and no back in terms of sound, only a centre and periphery. Traditionally, all sound comes from the direction of the stage, but during Sonic Light a spatial sound system will be used in which the audience will be surrounded by six independent loudspeakers on the floor and six hanging from the ceiling. In this way it will be possible to compose the spatial experience of both sound and light in the 'Sonic Light Box'.

As has become customary during the Sonic Acts festival, the programme at the start of the evening will be aimed more at an audience interested in the arts and will transform to a more dance-oriented programme after midnight. The evenings will not be simply a succession of performances according to a festival schedule, but will have a modular structure. We have asked the invited artists to give a number of short performances instead of playing one long set. For example, an artist may be giving a short performance of pure sound collage on Friday evening and play a dance-oriented set on Saturday. The programme of each evening is designed to provide a maximum of variety and contrast between successive sets.

We also asked the artists we invited to engage in various collaborations. We have set these up to promote dialogue between the different worlds of light art and sound art, and to show a wide variety of approaches to the relationship between image and sound. The programme offers a wide range of artists, from renowned composers such as Amacher to young dogs such as Venetian Snares, from projections of films by Oskar Fischinger to improvisations by Golan Levin and Benton Bainbridge.

The exact time schedule of performances can be found two weeks prior to the festival on www.sonicacts.com. There will also be a printed schedule as guide for the evenings. Announcements will be made on special displays in Paradiso.

The Friday evening starts at 23:00h with a programme until 4:00h.
The Saturday programme starts at 20:00h and ends at 4:00h.

Scott Arford (USA) investigates what happens when image is interpreted as sound and sound as image. Discrete pieces of static, dissected and tuned, are Arford's building blocks: radio static, T.V. static, garbled transmissions, magnetic and electrical interference, ground loops, shorts, and glitches - the technological and cultural by-products of a media- obsessed society.

Benton-C Bainbridge (USA) draws upon a youth misspent playing with fire, food and electronics to compose moving pictures for stage performance, generative installation and fixed media dissemination. He was a founding member of several video performance collectives in New York, such as 77 Hz, The Poool and NNeng. His collaborations include work with Bill Etra and David Linton's UnityGain.

Olivia Block (USA) combines field recordings, electronics and acoustic segments. Working primarily with solo recorded media, she makes sound compositions which make you think that you are not listening to sound but rather that you have become part of the sounding object. It is a form of music in which the abstract and the visceral can co-exist.

COH (SE/RU): Ivan Pavlov has more links with the Russian avant-garde than with Western rock-pop tradition. As a qualified acoustic researcher he is involved in developing new possibilities for sound synthesis. He has found a way to compose single tones into an ensemble which provides both lyrical and comic associations.

Sue Costabile (USA) is a photographer and video artist who often explores the themes of the organic and the inorganic. Her live performances involve various media including photographs, negatives, drawings, watercolours, coloured transparencies and tiny objects, set in motion, digitized and processed in real-time.

Fred Collopy (USA) designed his Imager software to enable himself and other artists to play images as musicians play with sounds. He programmed the first version of it in 1977, since then it has evolved as computers have changed. It is still around today as one of the first real-time animation programs ever.

Richard Devine's (USA) music makes references to experimental techno but is so masterly that the repetitive nature of this genre is hardly present. He was actually due to appear at Sonic Acts last year but was unable to come. For Sonic Light he has composed a special twelve-speaker piece

Effekt (DE/UK): Kaspar Daugaard and Stefan Mylleager won the animation competition instituted by warp records and Squarepusher in 2001, with their stunning video clip 'the exploding psychology'. Together with Lasse Nielsen they formed Effekt. They build their own software to create real-time, improvised graphics for music. For Sonic Light, Effekt will be bringing new video footage from their hometowns, Copenhagen and London, to mix in with their always unpredictable computer-generated imagery.

Dino Felipe (USA) is one of the schematic label artists present at the festival. He will be playing some of his unreleased newer music. His music moves languidly across the palettes of glitch, microhouse, and electro-pop. At the same time the music delineates between digital and analogue, the real and the imagined. The performance at Sonic Light is part of his first ever European tour.

Hazard (SE): Benny Nilsen started operating under the name Hazard in 1996. He focuses on the perception of time and space as experienced through sound. His source material mostly comes from field recordings. However, for Sonic Light he will be giving several short performances with source material taken from the various sounds produced by a church organ.

Hecker (D): Florian Hecker is an independent artist in the field of computer music. He has been doing research on mobile performance tools, and using laptop computers since the first wave of MEGO related concerts in 1996. During his performance he will not only produce sound, but he will also control the lights in the Sonic Light Box in relation to his music.

Edwin van der Heide (NL) is one of the curators of Sonic Light. He will be presenting a short solo performance in which sound is used to control the movements of a strong laser. The result is a complex shape transforming space.

Arnold Hoogerwerf (NL) studied at the Interfaculty Image and Sound and makes kinetic sound and image installations. As member of the artist pool DAC~ , he initiated and realized various performances and installations which deal with the perception of space. At Sonic Light he will be programming part of the light sequences in the Sonic Light Box.

Naut Humon (USA) is the director of Recombinant Media labs in San Francisco. For over 25 years, Surround Traffic Control creator, curator and conductor, Naut Humon has been staging Recombinant events which have orchestrated a spatialized cinesonic network based on project residencies created at its treatment plant.

Besides his active collaborative work with Sonic Light, Naut Humon will be presenting two remixes. 'Persepolis remixed' is his remix of the Persepolis cd recently released by Asphodel. The cd contains the original INA-GRM mix of Iannis Xenakis's composition and remixes by renowned artists. The photographic still imagery that accompanies the music comes from the actual photo documentation of the live night-time event at the Persepolis ruins in southern Iran during 1971. The second work by Naut Humon is a remix of Granular Synthesis's 'Noisegate' produced in collaboration with Tim Digulla.

KidGoesting (NL) has become one of the regular presenters at Sonic Acts. For the last five years he has been active on the Amsterdam electro scene. He is a resident DJ at the Mazzo and organizes a monthly evening in Paradiso. KidGoesting will be playing in the small auditorium on Saturday night.

Laminar (USA): Fred Szymanski is using the name Laminar for his audiovisual installations. He has made a custom twelve-speaker version of his video installation 'Retentions' for Sonic Light at the Recombinant Media Labs. Retentions is very powerful because of its original colourful imagery. Fred Szymanski will not be present at the festival.

Golan Levin (USA) will give a number of performances with his 'Audiovisual Environment Suite'. This is a collection of self-written software tools which he can use to generate highly articulate images and sounds in real-time. With gestures he can draw and animate visual patterns which are then interpreted as sounds.

Lia (AT/PT) makes very beautiful interactive applets for the web and also works as a graphic designer. She has a very pure and organic style within the digital domain. Lia will be presenting different multiple collaborations.

Francisco Lopez (ES) bases his performances on his own sound recordings. In his recordings he is not so much concerned with the recognizability of the sound but rather the sonic nature of the sound in itself. He will be presenting three twelve-speaker modules and a performance which will take place in the dark. People will be given blindfolds: Sonic no Light.

Peter Luining (NL) first received international recognition with this work 'Clickclub' which he presented at the Transmediale in Berlin in 1999. His use of sound in this work earned him the unofficial title of 'next generation Superbad'. Since 1997 his work has evolved towards an increasing minimalism while continuing his earlier research on the dynamics of the net. Following one of Luining's presentations, Remko Scha, Dutch professor in computer arts remarked "If Mondrian were still alive, this is what he would do."

Numb (JP): Takashi Kizawa is very active in the techno scene in Japan. He has been developing futuristic breakbeats which are not comparable to developments happening in Europe and the United States. He makes true club music which he sees as a reply from Japan to Autechre, Boards of Canada, Pole and Kit Clayton. It will be his first performance in Holland.

Robert Pravda (NL,YU),
5x5x5, is a three dimensional matrix of ordinary household bulbs with attached speakers,powered by 220 Volts. Movement and intensity of light and sound in the limited universe of the object are the input parameters for the controlling algorithm of the installation.

pxp (D/AT) stands for the department for penetration and perversion. Think of equations which create anarchy instead of assert order, and you've only begun to approximate the experience of what it's like to see and hear pxp. pxp will be giving two different audiovisual performances.

Random k (NL) does live video improvisations, mainly using basic videomixer and feedback signals. Random k generates layers with a series of mixers. He is looking for a more complex interaction with sound or music.

Joost Rekveld (NL) is one of the curators of Sonic Light. He will be making his vj-debut using a combination of ancient television oscillators and the kind of optical set-up that he has been using to make some of his abstract films.

reMI (AT) is a duo consisting of Renate Oblak, visuals, and Michael Pinter, sound. Their work has been called 'music videos for the knowledgeable' and is very radical in the way it combines the nature of the material, using the gaps in between signals. It is the directness of its effect which creates its iconic power. reMI has developed and adapted work especially for Sonic Light.

Seth Riskin (USA) will be presenting a number of short 'Light Dance' performances. These are soundless, "space-defining performances of light phenomena articulated by body movements". Riskin attaches his own custom-designed light instruments and projectors to his body. The light and projections he produces interact with the architecture of the space.

Don Ritter (USA) will, among other things, be performing his audiovisual piece 'digestion', in which organic imagery, originating as boiling water, is interactively transformed into a series of mechanical movements with synchronized sound, creating the impression that the sounds are being produced by the imagery.

Otto von Schirach (USA) makes experimental neo-techno music for musical intellectuals. He extends into the realm of cartoons, you may hear hints of thrash and hardcore, and heavy, hip-hop-influenced beats, an amalgamation of burbles, bleeps, screeches and burps. He has made a special twelve-speaker composition for Sonic Light.

Sutekh (USA): Seth Horvitz has released consistently inconsistent electronic music on labels such as Force Inc./Mille Plateaux, Source, Minus, Orthlorng Musork, Cytrax, and his own Context label since 1997. Manipulating computers, samplers, synthesizers, and found sounds, he has created everything from deep, minimal house and techno to dense, dissonant noise collage.

tcw23 (NL) a.k.a Arthur Ivens makes digitalfilms, mostly a mix of classic cinema and new live cinema, relating to sound, the space in which it is being performed, as well as the screens it is projected on.