Cinema History: An Audiovisual Close-Up

05.11.2009

Image and sound, eye and ear—inseparable pairings nowadays. In our modern world, audiovisual impressions are omnipresent. See this Sound, a major exhibition at the Lentos Art Museum Linz and an extensive online archive, elaborates on the entire audiovisual spectrum in art and media. There’s also an interesting program of accompanying events.

From early multimedia works in the 1920s, stops at the highpoints of Pop culture, a perusal of perception theory, right up to modern-day media technology—“See This Sound” runs the gamut. Needless to say, the optimal mode of experiencing audiovisual artworks is to see and hear them up close and personal. A program of accompanying events showcases milestones and outstanding examples. In November, the focus is on film. Director Michael Snow’s 1964 work “New York Eye and Ear Control” features a groundbreaking jazz soundtrack. Snow will go into detail about his production in a slideshow set for November 5th. We’ll spotlight another one of his works the following evening, November 6th: “Rameau's Nephew” (1972-74) was a pioneering cinematic investigation of the possibilities of combining images and sounds. Due to its length (almost five hours), this film is rarely screened. But Moviemento is no run-of-the-mill theater; and here, the director will be on hand too. We would also like to call attention to a speech about early image-sound experiments that sought to apply musical principles to moving pictures and to create music by means of abstract optical forms. Sandra Naumann, a scholar on the staff of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research, will provide commentary on excerpts from pioneering works selected from international archives.

New York Eye and Ear Control
Slideshow with Michael Snow
November 5, 2009, 7 PM
Lentos Art Museum Linz, Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1, 4020 Linz

Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen
November 6, 2009, 4 PM
Moviemento, Dametzstr. 30, 4020 Linz

How Audio Got into the Picture: Visual Music and Early Sound-Image Experiments on Film
November 19, 2009, 7 PM
Lentos Art Museum Linz, Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1, 4020 Linz

For complete details about SEE THIS SOUND and the program of accompanying events, log on to www.linz09.at/see-this-sound and www.see-this-sound.at