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Themesicon: navigation pathSound and Imageicon: navigation pathAudiovisions
 
Skate (Schaefer, Janek)Tönende Ornamente (Fischinger, Oskar), 1932
 
 
 

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rhythmic-formal parallel structure. Approaches of this kind can already be seen in the early video work by Nam June Paik. [19] The installation «Skate» (2004) by the London-based media artist Janek Schaefer <Bio NEU> is founded on a simple electric analogy: He manufactured special records whose grooves are interrupted. As a consequence, the needle hops from one groove fragment to the next. The three-armed record player on which the records are played is connected to a set of red light bulbs, the lamps lighting up to the arbitrary rhythms created by the playing.

Experiments conducted in the first half of the twentieth century with the aid of optical sound recording to acquire image and sound out of one and the same material, thus achieving an audiovisual fusion, can be regarded as the forerunners of today's visuals. Based on his own research, for «Tönende Ornamente» (1932) Oskar Fischinger assumed that there are unconscious connections between culturally disseminated ornaments and their sounds when playing them on optical sound equipment. In Leningrad in 1930, Arsenij Avraamov and Jevgenij Scholpo began

 

experimenting with the synthesis of sound out of graphic forms. For his idea of the ‹drawn sound,› Scholpo constructed a special machine, whose principle is similar to so-called ‹wave tables› as used in digital sound synthesis: If one periodically reads out an individual image with a particular curve form using optical sound equipment, a continuous sound is created. Scholpo made attempts to explore to what extent e.g. the sound of scissorcut- like facial profiles reflects the character of the type of person being shown. This approach is paralleled by the audiovisual works by the duo Granular, who process image and sound according to the same principle (of kgranular synthesis).

Interest in the use of electric signals for the generation of music and image has existed since the initial years of electronic design methods, for example with the visualization of sounds on the oscillograph. [20] In addition, forms of visualization were sought which, like traditional notation, could serve as a suitable foundation for the musicological analysis of electronic sound processes (sonagram, graphic notation). In the process, it was realized that these

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