Sonic Light 2003 Conference


The conference part of Sonic Light will take place on 21st, 22nd and 23rd February in De Balie. The subject of the Sonic Acts conference last year was 'The Art of Programming', this year it is to be 'Composing Light, Articulating Space'.

The conference gives a broad overview of the art of 'composed light': the shaping in time of light and colour in a way which is comparable to the way sound is given form in music. A large part of the conference will consist of presentations by artists who will explain something of the background to their work, the techniques they use or may have devised and will include presentations of fragments of their work. Another part of the conference will comprise more theoretical and historical presentations which place present-day developments in a broader context.


To bring some order to the web of ideas and influences linking the various contributions, the conference has been loosely structured around three themes, coinciding with the three days. The first day will centre on the links between light art, the visual arts and architecture. The second day will be about strategies for making image and sound compositions, focusing on computer animations in film and for the web. The last day will deal with various approaches to perform light and abstract images in real-time.


During the three days of the conference there will be a modest exhibition in De Balie, consisting of two works. An amazing '3d-lumia' box by Earl Reiback will be shown, a machine which produces refined optically 'real' images that appear to float in the space before it. There will also be a presentation on dvd of the reconstruction of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack's 'Farbenlichtspiele', made in 2000 by a Viennese team of performers headed by Corinne Schweizer and Peter Böhm.

 

Fred Collopy - The Contributions of Painters to the Develop- ment of Visual Music












In this talk Collopy will describe some of the early contributions of abstract painters to the development of an art of light, as well as some of their theories about the relationship of painting to music. The artists considered will include Leopold Survage, Morgan Russell, Stanton Macdonald Wright, Paul Klee, Gyorgy Kepes, Piet Mondrian, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
Fred Collopy was a former visiting scientist at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and teaches technology and design at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School. His web site at rhythmiclight.com details the history and theoretical foundations of visual music.

http://www.rhythmiclight.com

 

Earl Reiback - My Work in Lumia

Reiback will present his 'lumia' work and explain his methods and techniques.
After an initial career as a nuclear physicist, Earl Reiback turned to kinetic light art through an effort to improve the environment in which he was living. His light boxes were quickly picked up by the contemporary art scene and were termed 'lumia' after the work of Thomas Wilfred who independently had been doing similar things and became a close friend. Outside the art world he did large-scale projects for light environments in restaurants, for interior design, as backdrops for fashion shows and for the Electric Circus, the first discotheque in history.

 

Eleonore de Lavandeyra-Schöffer
- Luminodynamism in the work of Nicolas Schöffer

Nicolas Schöffer had an amazing output of visionary ideas about art and the future of mankind. He started as a painter but understood around 1948 that in our present society it was no longer possible to create valid art using the traditional 'beaux-arts' media. He turned to making art using the immaterial substances of space, light and time, which led him to formulate Spatiodynamism, Luminodynamism and Chronodynamism, respectively. He made many moving, interactive and programmed sculptures, experimental cybernetic shows, films, projects for urban planning and published a number of books.
Eleonore de Lavandeyra-Schöffer abandoned her own career as an ethnomusicologist and Indian music teacher to take care of her husband and his work when he became partly paralysed in the last years of his life. After his death she has continued to preserve and promote his work.

http://www.olats.org/schoffer/

 

Cees Ronda - New Technologies for Illumination

Cees Ronda will give an introduction on the physics underlying - familiar light sources and on the relationship between how light is generated and the way colours can be reproduced. In the second part of the talk he will discuss new developments in illumination from a technical research and development perspective. He will elucidate the basic physical processes and interactions leading to the emission of light in the new light sources, which differ quite extensively from the light sources and illumination systems used nowadays. Ronda will also discuss recent developments in LED technology, in colour variable light and give a survey of future technologies.
Cees Ronda is professor ‘Materials Science’ at the Ornstein Laboratoryof Utrecht University and works for the Philips Research Laboratories in Aachen as research fellow.

http://www.philips.nl

 

Seth Riskin - Light Dance



Riskin's work involves physical movement with the additional element of light instruments attached to his body, carefully aimed and adjusted to produce space-defining effects. The silent performances, known as Light Dance, surround viewers with fluid architectures of light. The talk will set the Light Dance art form within a broad historical context of human expression through the medium of light. Emphasis will be placed on the conjunction of the body with light -- the light-body –as a highly charged, trans-cultural image that is key to an "anthropology" of light.

A former U.S. national champion gymnast, Seth Riskin originated Light Dance at the M.I.T. Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He has been performing internationally and has been conductingresearch that led him to India to study Hindu ritual fire dances. Currently Seth is a Research Fellow at the M.I.T. Center for Advanced Visual Studies and Director of the M.I.T. Light Symposium 2003, a forum on new light technologies, emerging visual culture and the role of art.

http://web.mit.edu/cavs/people/riskin/riskin.html

 

Paul Friedlander - 3-D Light Forms

Friedlander will describe how he first became interested in kinetic art and began to develop an interest in light sculpture. He will talk about his previous career in stage lighting and his subsequent quest to create a means of 3-D projection, and how this led to the invention of Chromastrobic Light. He will recount the discovery of the gyrating forms that blend harmony and chaos which are so characteristic of his work. He will then show how these lightforms developed from a desk- top sized novelty to light sculptures on a monumental scale.

Paul Friedlander was raised in Cambridge on a diet of relativity and cosmology, and was an aspiring rocket scientist and interstellar propulsion expert. He metamorphosed to become a stage lighting designer, computer artist and light sculptor. His sculptures have been shown widely all around the globe. He was also an award winner at 'Lightforms '98' in New York.

http://www.paulfriedlander.com

 

Robert Haller - The Films of Jordan Belson
(film programme)















Like Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson approached film with one foot in Eastern religion and one in modern science. His works fall into several phases: the 1940's, the period 1950-62, and a third phase that began in 1964 with 'Re-entry'. Robert Haller will introduce a programme which includes the following films by Belson: Allures (1961), Re-Entry (1964), Phenomena (1965), Samadhi (1967), World (1970) and Light (1973).

Robert Haller has been in charge of the collections and film preservation of Anthology Film Archives in New York. Among other things, he has been involved in the preservation of the works of Jim Davis, published several texts by Jim Davis, Stan Brakhage and the catalogues of events he has curated: 'First Light' in 1998 and 'Galaxy' in 2001.

http://www.roberthaller.com/

 

Frans Evers - A Dancer had a Dance:
Synesthesia and the Unity of the Arts

Evers will talk about his work in experimental research, ranging from perceptual psycho-physics to the study of synesthetic concepts in experimental art. He will discuss his collaborative work with Larry Marks in a cross-modal research programme, which showed strong perceptual interactions between auditory pitch and loudness with visual brightness and sharpness of visual form. Besides this, he will discuss some of the art projects based on the study of historical synesthetic models by Castel (1725), Scheuer (1798), Wagner (1850), Kandinsky (1911), Schönberg(1910), and Mondrian(1922), etc.

Frans Evers has been head of the Interfaculty Image and Sound of the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague since 1989, and was one of the founders of the Sonic Acts festival in 1994. Prior to and alongside to his work as an innovator in art education, he studied synesthesia at the University of Amsterdam and, further to receiving a Fulbright Award, was able to continue his research at Yale University.

http://www.interfaculty.nl

 

Sylvie Dallet - Groupe de Recherche Images



















Pierre Schaeffer is mostly known for his pioneering work as a composer and theorist of 'Musique Concrète'. Much less known is the fact that he was also a profound thinker about mass media, multimedia and about the relationship between image and sound. For a number of years he was not only the head of the 'Groupe de Recherches Musicales' but also of the 'Groupe de Recherche Images' and other research groups devoted to technology and literature. These were experimenting with two innovative approaches: the transition from the classical Arts to the recording Arts , and the critical practice of the 'observer/observed'.

Sylvie Dallet is a philosopher and historian. She was chosen by Schaeffer to initiate reflection on his work and to preserve his archives and consequently, since 1995, she has been the director of the 'Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche Pierre Schaeffer'. She was appointed professor at the University of Marne la Vallée to start a research and study programme devoted to contemporary art in relation to new technologies, which began in 2002. She has also regularly published essays on cinema and political history.

http://www.olats.org/pionniers/pp/schaeffer

 

Larry Cuba - Form = Movement

In the pure form of abstraction that Cuba pursues, visual perception is paramount. But because the images are generated via algorithms written in computer language, there is a paradox in trying to use words to describe images for which words do not exist. He will present and discuss his work on film 'Two Space', '3/78' and 'Calculated Movements' and will reveal his current projects.

Larry Cuba is widely recognized as a pioneer in the use of computers in animation art. Producing his first computer animation in 1974, Cuba was at the forefront of the computer-animation artists considered the "second generation" - those who directly followed the visionaries of the sixties: John Whitney Sr., Stan Vanderbeek and Lillian Schwartz. He is the founder of the iotaCenter in Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the art of light and movement.

http://www.well.com/user/cuba/

http://www.iotacenter.org/

 

Bart Vegter - A Vast Space with a Narrow Entrance

Bart Vegter has developed his own algorithms and his own software to make his most recent abstract films. In this presentation he will talk about the obstacles and discoveries when using computers to make moving images and he will explain something about the making of two of his recent computer films: 'NACHT-LICHT' and 'FOREST-VIEWS'. Sketches, image tests and fragments of these films will be shown, 'FOREST-VIEWS' will be shown in its entirety.

Bart Vegter has a background in physics and electronics. He started to make films after coming into contact with the Free Academy Psychopolis in The Hague and many of the people involved, such as Frans Zwartjes, Peter Rubin, Paul de Mol and Jacques Verbeek. Since 1981 he has made seven abstract films using a variety of techniques.

http://home.luna.nl/~bave/

 

Chris Casady - Instant Visual Music around the World

Chris Casady is animating with Macromedia Flash aiming to re-invigorate the field of abstract animations begun by the early non-objective painters of the 20th century. Many of them were interested in film and made various attempts to animate their visions with technology of the time; tedious hand animation. Today, the ability to easily place moving coloured images and sound in front of eyeballs around the world instantly, is an opportunity too compelling to ignore. We owe it to those who did it the hard way, to do it the easy way. Chris will share his experiments.

Chris Casady is a 'traditional' effects animator with an early training in visual music at Cal-Arts in Los Angeles. Working from his studio in Hollywood he has earned two Clio awards for his work in commercials and directed an animated music video for the Beastie Boys. His film credits include the first three Star Wars films, TRON, Beetlejuice, Airplane! and Tank Girl. His animated film "Pencil Dance" won awards at animation festivals in France, Italy, Japan and Canada and he was a five-time speaker at the FlashForward International conference.

http://www.naptime.com/

 

Peter Luining - The Emergence of the Sound Engine















From the early beginnings of the Internet Peter Luining was interested in combining images and sounds interactively, and in his talk he will describe how his work evolved in relation to the development of computers and the Internet. With computers turning into multimedia machines and the Internet becoming faster, a new type of audiovisual work emerged: the sound engine. This is a small piece of software which allows the user to interact with images that are linked to sounds, thus making sound-image compositions possible. Luining will present his own sound engines, discuss some of the ideas behind them and show how they have evolved to fit different contexts.

After his contemporary philosophy study, Peter Luining became active in the Amsterdam vj-scene, made 3d-animations and videoclips. In 1995 the character of his work changed dramatically when he discovered the net and Luining first won international recognition with his work "Clickclub", at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. Since 1997 Luinings' work has turned towards a kind of minimalism, while continuing his earlier research on the dynamics of the net.

http://www.lfoundation.org

 

Pascal Rousseau - Light Experiments in the Beginnings of Abstraction.
An Archaeology of Participative Art

Rousseau will give an analysis of the first experiments with colour music and light shows in Europe and the United States, focusing on the idea of collective participation and popular communion in the new era of the modern age. He will approach this early history of light art by discussing the mystical and religious motives of the earliest light artists and the electrical metaphor of music as a magnetic and electrical fluid. He will draw parallels between these ideas from the early period and the avant-garde in the 1920s, the ‘happenings’ and environments of the 1960s, and the new emphasis on collectivity in today’s lounge phenomenon.

Pascal Rousseau is professor of contemporary art at the University of Tours and also works as a curator. He curated the exhibition "Robert Delaunay. From Impressionism to Abstraction" in the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1999 and is currently preparing a large exhibition about "The Origins of Abstraction" for the Musée d'Orsay in Paris in 2003. He has published several articles on synesthesia in the first stages of abstraction.

 

Peter Stasny - Light Art at the Bauhaus,
the 'Farbenlichtspiele' of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack

Peter Stasny - Light Art at the Bauhaus, the 'Farbenlichtspiele' of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack
The 'Farbenlichtspiele' by the Bauhaus student Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack resulted from investigations into the interaction of colour and form as well as from a shadow play by fellow student Kurt Schwerdtfeger in 1922. Their first public performance at the Bauhaus in 1923 was the starting point for Hirschfeld-Mack to become an important pioneer of the moving coloured image. The further development of the 'Farbenlichtspiele' towards mechanization ended abruptly in 1940 when Hirschfeld-Mack was deported to Australia from England, his country of exile. In this lecture Stasny will outline the history of the 'Farbenlichtspiele' and discuss their origins in the fundamental aesthetic research conducted at the Bauhaus, which also included direct and reflected light.

Peter Stasny did his thesis research on the work of Hirschfeld-Mack and curated the Hirschfeld-Mack exhibitions at the Museum for Modern Art in Bolzano, the Jüdisches Museum in Vienna and the Jüdisches Museum in Frankfurt in 2000. He teaches design science and design history in Linz, St. Pölten and Vienna.

http://www.jmw.at/de/ludwig_hirschfeld-mack.html

 

Michael Scroggins - Absolute Animation Through Improvisation





















"The approach to creating absolute animation that I have found to be the most successful draws upon the power inherent in real-time improvisation. A change made to the image creates a particular affect, this affect then influences the choice made in creating the next change, and so on. From my earliest experiences finger painting in the 1950s, doing liquid light projection in the 1960s, working with video synthesizers in the 1970s, playing video studio production switchers in the 1980s, to planning immersive VR performances in the 1990s, improvisation has been an essential factor in discovering affective compositional structures."

Michael Scroggins is a pioneer in the field of performance animation. His absolute animation works have been widely exhibited internationally. His most recent work investigates the potential of gesture capture in creating real-time absolute animation in immersive VR.

http://emsh.calarts.edu/~aka/

 

Benton-C Bainbridge - Try This at Home:
Analog Video Synthesis















Bainbridge will give a demonstration of his low-tech version of video synthesis, showing his tools, explaining his backgrounds and ideas. He will talk about his fascination with the pioneers of direct video synthesis and show fragments of his installation work and his work as a VJ.

Benton-C Bainbridge draws upon a youth misspent playing with fire, food and electronics to compose moving pictures for stage performance, generative installation and fixed media dissemination. He was a founding member of several video performance collectives in New York, such as 77 Hz, The Poool and NNeng. His collaborations include work with Bill Etra and David Linton's UnityGain.

http://www.benton-c.com/

 

Fred Collopy - An Instrument for Performing
Real-Time Abstract Animations













Imager is an instrument that permits painters to play images in the way that musicians play with sounds. Its design, which organizes controllers and modulators to manipulate colours, forms, and motions in real-time, will be discussed.

Fred Collopy designed his first version of Imager for the Apple II computer in 1977. Since then he has implemented it on several platforms and his work has been presented at SIGGRAPH, the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA), the Academy of Management, and numerous universities and shows.

http://www.rhythmiclight.com

 

Golan Levin - Interface Metaphors for Audiovisual Performance Systems













This talk presents an overview of interface metaphors for the real-time and simultaneous performance of dynamic imagery and sound, with special attention to the metaphor of an inexhaustible, infinitely variable, time-based, audiovisual substance which can be gesturally created, deposited, manipulated and deleted in a free-form, non-diagrammatic image space. With the goal of realizing instrumental systems through which the unison of sound and image could be tightly linked, commensurately malleable, and deeply plastic, a series of examples which make use of this metaphor will be presented and discussed.
Golan Levin is an artist, composer, performer and engineer interested in developing artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of reactive expression. His work focuses on the design of systems for the creation, manipulation and performance of simultaneous image and sound, as part of a more general inquiry into the formal language of interactivity, and of non-verbal communications protocols in cybernetic systems.

http://www.flong.com