Visual music, expanded cinema, live cinema, VJing, live audiovisual performance—these are concepts enough to create some confusion in the wide realm of today’s artistic audiovisual production. While each of these concepts is widely propagated and suggestive of its own line of history and shared practices, they are not as yet sufficiently defined for theoretical debate and clear practical use. To untangle this confusion was the aim of our project, The Audiovisual Breakthrough, which brought together six international researchers to solve the problem in a collaborative effort. This book is the result. Its main purpose is to make the entangled complexities of the field manageable by putting forth and elaborating on definitions for the five main concepts named above. The theoretical texts are complemented by the design of the book, a graphic take on audiovisuality that includes visualizations of the results from an international survey among the practitioners in the field of audiovisual (art) practices. This book is addressed to artists, curators, researchers, students, and teachers within these practices, and to anyone working at their intersection with other fields of knowledge.

Authors

-- -- -- x Ana Carvalho -- -- -- x is a live video composer and performer, who writes on subjects related to live audiovisual performance. She holds a PhD on “Communication and Digital Platforms” from Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (FLUP). Her thesis was titled “Materiality and the Ephemeral: Identity and Performative Audiovisual Arts, Its Documentation and Memory Construction.” In 2005, together with Brendan Byrne, she initiated VJTheory, an editorial project available online as an archive. Ana Carvalho has organized several events from a point of convergence of theory and practice in the UK and in Portugal. Currently she holds a position as invited lecturer at the Instituto Universitário da Maia (ISMAI). -- -- -- || Eva Fischer -- -- -- || is an Austrian art historian, curator, and visualist based in Vienna. She is the founder and director of the sound:frame Festival for Audiovisual Expressions in Vienna, which she started in 2007. Since then, sound:frame has become one of the most important international festivals in that field. Fischer wrote her magister thesis on “Audiovisual Tendencies” and has widely published and lectured on interdisciplinary artistic approaches and cultural management. Since 2011, she has been holding a lectureship on “Audiovisual Media” at the IKM/University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, and since 2013 she has been teaching “Experimental Media” at the St Pölten University of Applied Sciences. She has been curator of international exhibitions and audiovisual live performance programs in New York, Moscow, Melbourne, Shanghai, Milan, Berlin, and other cities, and is performing as a visualist at international festivals and events. -- -- -- > Cornelia Lund -- -- -- > is an art and media theorist and curator living in Berlin. Since 2004, she has been co-director of fluctuating images, a platform for media art and design with a focus on audiovisual artistic production. Currently, she is research fellow in a DFG research project on German documentary film at the University of Hamburg. For many years she has been teaching design theory at various universities, such as the University of Applied Sciences Vorarlberg, University of Applied Sciences Hamburg, and the University of the Arts Bremen. Cornelia Lund is co-editor, together with Holger Lund, of Audio.Visual: On Visual Music and Related Media (Arnoldsche, 2009) and Design der Zukunft (AV Edition, 2014). She is also co-editor of the online platform Post-digital Culture. Her work as a curator includes numerous screenings and exhibitions (e.g. Mapping Festival Geneva, Academy of the Arts Berlin, Index Festival New York, Hamburger Architektursommer). -- -- -- x Gabriel Menotti -- -- -- x is an independent curator and lecturer in Multimedia at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil. He is the author of Através da Sala Escura (Intermeios, 2012), a history of movie theaters from the perspective of VJing spaces, and co-editor of Besides the Screen: Moving Images through Distribution, Promotion and Curation (Palgrave, 2015). Menotti holds a PhD in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths College at the University of London, and another from the Catholic University of São Paulo. He has published work in a number of research journals and books, as well as contributed to international events such as the São Paulo Biennial, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, and the transmediale festival. -- -- -- /// Adeena Mey -- -- -- /// is a critic, curator, and currently a PhD candidate at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He studied Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College in London and Science Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Lausanne. In 2013–15 he was a visiting researcher at Central Saint-Martins, London. During this time, he also ran the independent project space PastVynerStreet, nested in a railway arch in East London, with co-curator Sandra Sykorova. With François Bovier, he is the editor of the books René Berger: L’art vidéo (JRP-Ringier, 2014); Cinéma Exposé / Exhibited Cinema (ECAL/Les presses du réel, 2015); Exhibiting the Moving Image: History Revisited and Cinema in the Expanded Field (both forthcoming in late 2015 from JRP-Ringier). He is currently a critic in residence at Cheongju Art Studio in South Korea, where he is curating the exhibition Kunsthalle Archeology. Mey’s writings address the intersection of experimental and artists’ films, exhibition history, and critical theory. -- -- -- & Eva-Maria Offermann -- -- -- & is a German designer whose work is based on concepts shifting between art and design. She has mainly concentrated on print design and shown her posters in design exhibitions around the world, garnering prizes from the Tokyo Type Director’s Club, the International Poster and Graphic Design Festival Chaumont, the Taipei International Design Award, among several others. Offermann studied fine arts and design at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, receiving her degree in communication design in 2012. Since then she has been running her own studio, while also taking up work as a visual communications assistant at Kunsthochschule Kassel the following year (emoffermann.de and facebook.com/emoffermann) -- -- -- || Maria Pfeifer -- -- -- || is an Austrian cultural manager and scholar of comparative literature, based in Vienna and Linz. She is part of the core team running the sound:frame Festival for Audiovisual Expressions and wrote her master thesis on the visualization of literature. Since 2011 she has also been involved in various projects of the Linz-based Festival Ars Electronica and the Ars Electronica Futurelab. Currently she is holding a lectureship on event management and exhibition practices in the field of literature at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg.

Artists

-- -- -- || 1mpar -- -- -- || is Henrique Roscoe, digital artist, musician and curator. Works in the audiovisual area since 2004. Is graduated in Social Communication (UFMG) and Electronic Engineering (PUC/MG) and has expertise in Design (FUMEC). Has a conceptual and generative project called HOL. With this project had performed at the main live images festivals in Brazil like Sónar, FILE, ON_OFF, Live Cinema, Multiplicidade, KinoLounge, FAD and also abroad, in England (NIME, Encounters), Germany (Rencontres Internationales), Poland (WRO), USA (Gameplay), Greece (AVAF), Italy (roBOt), and Mexico (Transitio). Is the curator of FAD – digital art festival - that happens in Belo Horizonte since 2007 (1mpar.com). -- -- -- x e:v/a -- -- -- x takes advantage of the wide range of visual material that surrounds us. Influenced by street art, graffiti and urban culture she creates a visual world that is intrinsically tied to music in her VJ performances (soundframe.at). -- -- -- & Laetitia Morais -- -- -- & is visual artist, professor and researcher. Works with mixed media (mostly film and installation) on the theme of observation and distance. Main aim is to move towards the unknown, in search for the unexpected, where paradoxes are revealed, denouncing historical events and fictional narratives (laetitiamorais.wordpress.com). -- -- -- >> wedupeyou -- -- -- >> is new. brandnew. nobody ever knew. WHO is wedupeyou ... -- -- -- /// VJ Suave -- -- -- /// is Ygor Marotta and Cecilia Soloaga, a new media art duo, based in São Paulo, transforming hand drawn illustrations into live stories since 2009. As specialists in moving projection and digital graffiti they create movies that are poignant, warm and personal, crafted from hand-drawn media, transformed into digital animation, then projection-mapped in a way that seems to bring streets alive (vjsuave.com).