The Cinematic Experience

Cimatics likes to draw attention to some remarkable theoretical approaches of live AV as an emergent cultural phenomenon. Therefore Cimatics presents an afternoon session with a presentation from VJ Theory (UK) and a complete conference in collaboration with Transmedia/St-Lukas Brussel (curated by Boris Debackere): The Cinematic Experience.

Boris Debackere invites 4 artists to reflect on live AV. Live Cinema is a quest for a symbiosis between sound and image, performed in real-time, exploring the possibilities of generating and manipulating audiovisual material. Digital media do not represent, they generate. Rather software than hardware, they introduce a new relation between user and screen (instead of viewer and screen) based on an interactive way of looking. Interacting with dynamic digital processes asks for different approaches from those in the era of mimicking media.

Artists: Randy Jones (US), Marius Watz (NO), Jasch (CH), Thomas Zummer (US)

In collaboration with Transmedia (Sint-Lukas Brussel) and Sonic Acts.

Randy Jones (Seattle) is a composer and software designer who makes visual music. His live performances are real time simulations of subjective realities, combining a scientific outlook with a cosmic cinematic language. He has performed at festivals including MUTEK (Montreal), the Festival de Música Electroacústica (Havana), the Northwest Film Forum’s Visual Music Festival (Seattle), and New Forms (Vancouver). Other projects have included tour visuals for Radiohead, motion visual design for a permanent installation at the Seattle Public Library, and an installation for Seattle's aro.space. Jones is a co-creator of Jitter, the graphics and matrix processing software published by Cycling '74.

http://2uptech.com/

Marius Watz (NO) is an artist working with visual abstraction through generative processes. An autodidact, he dropped out of Computer Science studies to pursue visual work through programming. His work is known for its bold colors and strong geometric composition, and has been exhibited extensively in the international media art scene.Watz is the founder of Generator.x, a blog and series of events related to generative art and design. He is currently teaching at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, lecturing on computational strategies for artists and designers.

http://www.unlekker.net

http://www.generatorx.no

A doublebass-player, composer and digital artist, Jasch is active in electronic and exploratory music, in jazz, contemporary music, performance and installation art as well as writing music for chamber-ensembles, theatre and film. His main focus is on works combining digital sound and images, abstract graphics and experimental video in the field of electro-acoustic music and in mixed-media projects for the stage and in installations. Jasch has been invited as artist and lecturer to numerous cultural and academic institutions and has presented installations in galleries and performances in clubs and at festivals such as Résonance Festival (Paris), Sonar Festival (Barcelona), Transmediale Festival (Berlin), the Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and many other venues throughout Europe, North America, Australia and Japan. In addition to performing,

Jasch is also an Associate Researcher at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology of the Zurich University of the Arts

http://www.jasch.ch

Thomas Zummer is a scholar, writer, artist and curator. He is a frequent writer and lecturer on the relations between philosophy, aesthetics, and technology, and currently directs advanced seminars in the Media Studies program of the New School University in New York City. He has taught at New York University, Brown University, Tyler School of Art/Temple University, and is a Regular Visiting Professor/Thesis Director in the Transart Institute in Linz, Austria and has been a regular lecturer in the Transmedia programme/post-graduate in Brussels. He has published widely, and is currently completing a book-length study on the early history of reference systems, entitled Intercessionary Technologies: Database, Archive, Interface. Thomas Zummer’s drawings, sculpture and media works have shown internationally, with exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Antwerp, Istanbul, Paris, Amsterdam, and Beijing. He has major exhibitions forthcoming at the Museum of Contemporary Art/San José and MIT. Thomas Zummer currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

This project intends to develop a community actively discussing and reflecting on philosophy and theory related with Vjing and realtime interaction. It is apparent, during workshops and discussions at Festivals and symposia, that practitioners of both Vjing and Interactive Installations will quickly move on from problems with the practicalities of production to more complex ideas of how and why the process has, for example, significance for the viewer.

There is a lack of written texts on the philosophies and theories related with VJing and realtime interaction. This project and the associated book, aim to bring together work by some of the foremost practitioners and academics in the field. We aim to produce a body of work which, for the first time, will address these theoretical issues and place the practices of VJing and Interactive Installation, into a useful context. The website is a growing collection of articles, references and art projects in collaboration with contributors from the book and the growing community.

http://www.vjtheory.net

http://www.vjtheory.net/vjamtheory.html

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