Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
http://www.augmentedtonoscope.net
In order to crystallise and communicate the Why of my postgraduate research project, my imaginary comrades and I have been up quite late drafting an artistic manifesto, inspired by the sentiments of Tristan Tzara - one of the founders and central figures of the Dada movement. To launch a manifesto you have to want: A. B. C., and fulminate against 1,2, & 3.
Tristan Tzara, Dadaist Manifesto, 1918
I declare that the greater part of contemporary audiovisual culture is in a tired and sorry state. Caught in a swirling morass of audiovisual static fed incessantly by: the crass product placement and pouting lips/thrusting hips of MTV music videos; the endless conveyer belt of up-to-the-minute imaging methods and earworm soundtracks sponsored by TV and film advertisers misguidedly pursuing the novel; the anti-aesthetic iVideotics of Youtube; the bland visual wallpapering of countless clubs worldwide by bored, underpaid VJs (video jockeys) with too much time to fill and too little material/skill to do it; and overly earnest, audiovisual artworks that celebrate form over content through a techno-fetishism of cutting-edge audiovisual techniques and technologies. What we deserve is thoughtful and inventive exploration of the interplay between sound and image. A re-capturing of the imagination, a re-inspiring of awe and wonder and a re-engagement in deep and significant ways. We should strive to make Visual Music that transcends the background noise and offers unique and profound insights into the relationship between things and the nature of the world around us. Not that many will care So I want to design, test and refine a methodology and approach that generates new Visual Music of a rare and altogether different quality. I want the relationship between the audio and the visual to be direct and elementary - analogs of each other in aural and visual form - and to occur in real-time.
Through the instrumentation of the Augmented Tonoscope, I want to create a means and a process whereby audio and visual composition occurs simultaneously. By merging the usually separate strands of audio and visual (post) production into a single workflow I hope that sounds and images will interact with, influence and shape each other from the outset and then throughout all stages of composition, arrangement and mixing. I want to find an amalgam of sound and image that engages the viewer in a subtlety shifted way - a synchronisation between the senses of sight and hearing that results in a co-sensing of a coexpressiveness - where the mind is not doing two separate things, its doing the same thing in two ways. Akin to that by which Moritz (1976) critiques Oskar Fischingers synthetic sound production experiments, Ah, but those visuals contain formulas and gestures that communicate with us subconsciously, directly, without being appreciated or evaluated. I expect this will be a hard thing to do but then Im not doing this because it is easy.
References
Marinetti F.T. (1909), The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, Le Figaro, Paris, February 20, http://www. italianfuturism.org/manifestos/foundingmanifesto/ [accessed 16 August 2011] Tzara T. (1918) Dada Manifesto, http://www.freemedialibrary.com/index.php/Dada_Manifesto_(1918,_Tristan_Tzara), [accessed 16 August 2011] Scrivner L. (2006), How to Write an Avant-Garde Manifesto (a Manifesto), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_manifesto (downloadable as a PDF from) http://www.londonconsortium.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/scrivneripmessay.pdf [accessed 16 August 2011]