Cornelia Lund and Holger Lund (Eds.)
(2009);
Audio.Visual - On Visual Music and Related Media;
Stutgard: arnoldsche publishers

Taking on many formats, written works become more visible and are presented alongside work by AV performance artists. Texts can be found on an ongoing publishing basis online, either in new media publications such as Digimag for example or dedicated to a very specific public, as is the case with VJ Theory. Texts are also and at last being published in books and, although less frequently, in printed magazines. The AMinina magazine issue dedicated to Live Cinema commissioned by Mia Makela marks a change in print publication on subjects related to AV performance. Theoretical work is also part of onsite events together with performances and installations. Following the AVIT example, festivals have been presenting talks and round tables, where is usual to find, side by side, in discussion panels, practitioners who have a critical approach to practice and theorists who tend to elaborate on more abstract ideas.

AUDIO • VISUAL on Visual Music and Related Media is a book that presents works by of the reflective practitioner and the theorist. It takes a format similar to AMinima as a starting point and develops it into a consistent book. The book, is dedicated to the subjects of work of music and image in interaction, covering practices in all its diversity. It also attempts to define this diversity segmenting VJing within the club scene, live cinema, and audiovisual performance in an experimental and sometimes conceptual format.

AUDIO • VISUAL on Visual Music and Related Media is organized to show the multiplicity that feeds these practices with uniqueness, without dismissing Individual perspectives shown side by side as evidence of unique approaches to practice.

Theoretical texts are developed around work by some of influential artists of the past history of live cinema, as is the case of Seeing Sound: The short films of Mary Ellen Bute by Sandra Naumann and Visual Muzak and the Regulation of the Senses and Notes on Nicolas Schoffer byHervé Vanel. These works don´t simply describe the practices or frame them within an historical context, more than that, they frame practices within the theoretical approaches who inform them, delineating its importance to understand nowadays practices. This is the first part of the book. The second part is directed to current practices. The book compiles a selection of texts written by practitioners who understand performative moment as part of an individual process. Texts written on current practices vary on personal views of works and attitudes. Paul Mumford´s text Visual Music takes an approach to the subject of narrative related to his own motivations and research. Laurent Carlier on his text VJing between Image and Sound adds a political shade on the existent inter-relations between DJ, VJ and the audience in the performative moment.
AUDIO • VISUAL on Visual Music and Related Media covers diversity in these practices while attempting to define each one by framing VJing within the club scene, live cinema within the situation of a non linear creation of audio and video as a cinematic experience and the one of the audiovisual performance in an experimental and sometimes conceptual format.

The expected reader is not one who needs an introductory helping hand with information to know the tools, techniques and style of the superstar AV performer. Readers will find in depth concise research and what is distinct and motivating to each performer and to the practice in general.

I have a feeling we have just started. New and different approaches will arise gradually. As more people get to see their practice beyond the making, on a reflective and abstract level, and become aware of the interrelations with peer practitioners. This has been taking shape for some time and so far, several works pioneer different approaches. This is the case of META/DATA by Mark Amerika, where fiction, theory and biography are melted in what he defines as improvised theory, or the VJam Theory, Collective Writings on Realtime Visual Performance, where theoretical work is resultant from collective effort in an experimental methodology for writing. Above all, the creation based on the collective, one where the individual voice has a distinctive tone, is strong enough to continue.

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