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Themesicon: navigation pathSound and Imageicon: navigation pathAudiovisions
 
Deathsentences (Negativland)
 
 
 

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process. The examples cited above can be interpreted in such a way that the composers regard the visuality of the creation of music as an integral part of music and only make us aware of it with the aid of the video image.

VJing in Clubs

While the video image is still a peculiarity in art-musical concert practice, we can hardly imagine clubs without video monitors. In the 1990s, a new audiovisual format emerged in clubs when DJs and VJs began performing together. For the most part, musicians and video artists have only loose contact during their performances, i.e. the connection between image and sound is rarely based on a technical link between the respective instruments or on concepts that have been drawn up in detail, rather it is primarily based on rough outlines or on improvisation, for example in performances by 242.pilots. Connections between music and image are primarily atmospheric, and it is rare that either level deals with specific content or narrative structures. Their different proximity to reality often results in an imbalance: While real images are frequently used in the

 

visuals, e.g. urban scenes in «Deathsentences» (2003) by the group Negativland, the music is hardly concrete or narrative throughout. Sometimes it is the use of only individual, concrete noises which can be assigned to real objects that mediates between narrative images and electronic sound processes.

Audiovisual Transformation: The Translation Problem

When linking image and sound, time and again the issue is raised of according to which process or code structural features should be translated from one sensory level to the other: What does it mean for the music when the image is blue, pale, or moving? And what does it mean for the image when the timbre of the music is dull, or the musical structure is harmonically complicated or melodically dominated by large interval jumps?

The problem results from the fact that on the one hand, when processing image and sound cognitively they have an inseparable reciprocal effect: For example, it is sometimes difficult to say whether it was the images or more likely the music in a film that

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