Audio-visual

Our live is audio-visual. There are other senses involved – touch, smell, temperature sensation, but here I want to focus on seeing and listening simultaneously. Film is the prime focus of this inquiry; this is why Michel Chion called one of his books Audio-Vision (1994).

When we go to a concert, seeing the musicians performing, gesturing, creating energy, working through a score – this is as important for understanding the music as listening to the musical tones.

Ryoji Ikeda pushes the concept of audio-vision further by generating both sound and images (he is not the only one: Carsten Nicolai and Alva Noto (some people have more than one identiy), Ryoichi Kurokawa, ….and others).

Programmes like processing, MAX/MSP, pd, SuperCollider and enable new audio-visual art practices.

But nothing is new. Oscar Fischinger, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann, Len Lye experimented audio-visually. The Centre for Visual Music does what the name says.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

This film has – astonishingly – the transition from silent to sound film as its topic. The comical drama evolves around the notion that a beautiful woman has to have a pleasant voice as well. Lina Lamont, a silent film star, even though glamorous has a grotesquely shrill voice. Her film company, Monumental Pictures, wants to replicate the success of the first sound film, The Jazz Singer (1927). But they have to replace Lina Lamont’s voice in the planned musical. Cosmo Brown has a brilliant idea to solve the problem.

In the late 1920s audiences considered Silent Film the only true film art there was. They didn’t see any point in duplicating what you see through sound. But synchronisation, also called dubbing opened new possiblities of designing the soundtrack, as a director wanted it.