Media FLow. Videoventure on electronic Music Pt. 1

The exhibition series “media flow. videoventure on electronic music” is dedicated to the contemporary phenomenon of visual music. Since the mid 1990s so-called visuals (digital video sequences) have been projected onto screens and walls on raves or in clubs by VJs (visual or video jockeys) to accompany electronic music. Visual music can also be understood as a kind of live cinema, where the screens are part of the architectural situation. The visuals themselves may be abstract or figurative, only seldom are they narrative. Studio productions of visual music are becoming more important, with a growing number of DVD bonus tracks on CD releases and of DVD labels in the genre. In these studio productions, visual music is getting closer to music videos, and the boundaries open up.

The exhibition series shows contemporary developments in visual music. Artists are invited to approach music with different concepts of visualisation that vary depending on their background – as installation artists, architects or designers for example.
The selected visualizations for “media flow. videoventure on electronic music. part I” originate from the fields of fine art (Graw/Böckler, repeated winner of MUVI Award, Oberhausen; Gabriel Shalom, audio-visual artist), architecture (Matthias Siegert, participant of the “International Videofestival Bochum”; Jaqueline Klein, who produces visuals for the label “Traum”; Yvette Klein, video, animations, installations) and media design (Ilja Knesovic/visuarte and Katrin Asen).
The music selected for the event is mainly electronic. This rather homogenic selection stresses the visual differences.

The exihibiton series “media flow. videoventure on electronic music” is based on a studio production of the same name, which will be released in connection with this exhibition (visuals by Matthias Siegert, music by Joachim Spieth).

The visualizations by Graw/Böckler „This Time Last Year“, „Because“ and „How to play a record“ to music by Mantler, Ulf Lohmann and Tujiko Noriko oscillate between music video, art video and visuals. Their work is based on an aesthetic choice from every day situations, and on film techniques such as time-laps shots or multi-layering. This kind of treatment transcends the music, while the sequences of images are themselves transcended by music, forming a very close audiovisual interdependence.
The musician Riley Reinhold has curated a selection of tracks by Thomas Brinkmann, which is being played to the video loop “Occupy” by Yvette Klein. The conventional hierarchy, and the interaction in time, of music and video is altered – the images are set free to change with the music.
In “Motion in Contrast”, Katrin Asen moves the camera to music by Resonator, literally making the camera dance.
For his visualization of music by Tim Blechmann and Oliver Prechtl, Ilja Knesovic uses one short sequence of a film starring Sophia Loren – a sequence in which she sprays mosquito repellent.
With “Small Tango Room” Gabriel Shalom contributes an audiovisual work for which he is also acting as musician. For Shalom, editing is the essential criterion of an audiovisual production – he divides images of a piano player's hands from the music to generate a dance of fingers and a dance of jump cuts.

Supported by
Medienteam der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart
MFG Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg
Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart
Unternehmen Form, Stuttgart, www.unternehmenform.de
f_concept. ton-licht-medientechnik, Stuttgart, www.f-concept.de

www.raumfuerprojektion.de
www.kompakt-net.de
www.traumschallplatten.de
www.onitor.de
www.resonator.de
www.tweakybambino.com
www.visuarte.de
www.siegert.cc