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Themesicon: navigation pathSound and Imageicon: navigation pathEditorial
Sound and Image
Editorial
Dieter Daniels, Inke Arns
 
 
 
 
 

 

Ahhh… / Ahhh… Doo, doo, doo, do-doh / Doo, doo, doo, doo doo do-doh Don't you wonder sometimes / About sound and vision Blue, blue, electric blue / That's the colour of my room / Where I will live / Blue, blue Pale blinds drawn all day / Nothing to do, nothing to say / Blue, blue I will sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision And I will sing, waiting for the gift of sound and vision Drifting into my solitude, over my head Don't you wonder sometimes / About sound and vision

(David Bowie, Sound & Vision, 1977)

David Bowie calls sound and vision a «gift» in his 1970s song, written in Berlin. It was anticipated with pleasure then, but now it has become an almost everyday phenomenon in contemporary (media) art and in pop culture. Current examples include video clips, techno-visuals, video/audio art and sampling techniques used by DJs and VJs. Given the enormous current range of linked sound and vision, this module takes stock of recent artistic projects and academic approaches in this field, after pioneering exhibitions like «Für Augen und Ohren. Von der Spieluhr zum

 

akustischen Environment» (Akademie der Künste Berlin, 1980) or «Vom Klang der Bilder. Die Musik in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts» (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1985).

The «Sound and Image» module takes the striking presence of audio-visual strategies in current (media) art projects as an opportunity to clarify concrete links with historical developments and thus reveal similarities with and differences from conceptual predecessors. This applies particularly to examples of abstract film («visual music») and early forms of radio play («radio film without vision») in the 1920s, anticipating the far-reaching perspectives of an artistic synthesis right at the beginning of the century. It is precisely this conceptual linking of current positions back to historical forerunners and showing them in the context of present-day (media-) artistic developments that makes «Sound-vision relations» different from most previous publications on this subject.

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While most of these have been either purely historical in their approach, or have simply brought current positions together, the present publication aims to allow both present and past to question each

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