The VIDEO MUSIC program is developed out of a distaste for the mainstream "music video" genre. After some searching we discovered a whole new underground genre of anti-music videos or "Video Music". In these films or videos either the music is made simultaneously with the images or a rythmic and musical pattern is created through the editing. There are many variations and techniques used by the filmmakers featured in this program but you can bet that most of them wouldn't be seen on MTV.

Live performance of
DJ Flack (laptop) and Walter Wright (Video Shredder)

Six Loop-Paintings 11 min, 16mm, 1970
Director: Barry Spinello

In SIX LOOP-PAINTINGS, as in SOUNDTRACK, sound and image are hand applied directly on to 16mm clear leader. The image at a given instant is repeated both on the image track and soundtrack, so that the viewer is visualizing the image he is hearing. However, unlike SOUNDTRACK, the images and sounds in SIX LOOP-PAINTINGS are not painted; they are made by cutting to size and pasting acetate self-adhesive patterns (Micotape and Zipatone) directly onto the clear film. Each pattern yields a distinct sound. Patterns of lines yield square wave sounds; patterns of dots yield sine wave sounds; patterns of diamonds yield sawtooth wave sounds, etc. The finer the pattern, the higher pitched the tone. The further spaced the pattern, the deeper the tone .... I especially recommend SIX LOOP-PAINTINGS to those interested in the texture of sound and image, and in the ways sound and image can relate to each other.

440.0 Hz 3min, video, 2001
Director: Michele Beck & Jorge Calvo

440.0 Hz (3:00 ©2001) was shot with a spy camera that was placed inside the artist’s mouth. The artist then walked down busy streets in New York City and recorded what s/he saw through his/her mouth. The video images were then digitally edited and the sound was sampled, mixed and manipulated. The video and sound throw the viewer into an uncomfortable and piercing experience where relief is found only when the mouth is closed and the outside world is blocked out.

Michele Beck (USA) and Jorge Calvo (Costa Rica) are multidisciplinary artists working with video, sound and performance. They have been working together for the past three years. Michele completed her Bachelors in Art History at New York University and Masters of Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Jorge pursued his studies in experimental theatre in Sydney, Australia. After finishing his training, he performed with the alternative theatre groups G.R.O.U.P and Dangerous Visions Theatre, both, which received funding from the Australian Arts Council. Michele and Jorge have shown their works internationally at film/video festival and are presently preparing for an installation at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona, Spain.

"We use ourselves, color, sound, and manipulated image to create short exorcisms. As collaborators, we consider the transient nature of our lives and look for ways to create actions through which to understand our existential dilemmas in a society that is becoming increasingly detached. Each of our works deals with the relationship between manipulated sound and image. We use the qualities of digital video and audio to evoke a physical reaction inside the body of the viewer, in the hopes of bypassing a response that is linear and thought-based. The availability of technology has given us the opportunity to consume a highly diverse world of culture, image and sound, and re-mix it into dramatic ceremonies that become our own rituals."

K.I.L.L. 3.5min, video, 1999
Director: Thorsten Fleisch

An accumulation of 180 different perspectives of a bank's skyscraper. Each perspective takes just one frame. at first there is chaos, then systems of visual organisation develop. The sound consists of a sampled phrase meaning: "our power is boundless and our means are inexhaustible". The editing plays with the relationship between the words and the images creating different meanings in breaking the succession of the words. in doing so the film serves as an ironic documentary on Frankfurt. Thorsten Fleisch was born in Koblenz, Germany in 1972. He began experimenting with his dad’s super 8 camera during his final years at highschool, where he also exhibited his first film, a short super 8 loop. After doing community service (instead of having to serve the Bundeswehr [german army]) in an institution for the mentally ill he studied art history, music- and media theory in Marburg. Still experimenting with super 8 and being unhappy with only doing theoretical studies he changed to study avant garde film at the Städelschule in Frankfurt with Prof. Peter Kubelka. There he began using 16 mm film and video for the first time. After studying in Frankfurt for two years he released “Blutrausch – Bloodlust” his first 16 mm film, featuring his own blood on film, and “K.I.L.L. – kinetic image laboratory/lobotomy” his first video almost at the same time in 1999. Both works where very well received at festivals worldwide. For more information about his work please visit www.fleischfilm.com. You can also download “K.I.L.L.” there.

Zip, Zip 2min, video, 2000
Director: Ericka Thompkins

In this piece editing and pattern bring out the musicality in the ebb and flow of urban rhythms.

6^ 4min, video, 2001
Director: Tony Cokes

6^ based on a music track by Damian Kulash, blends essayistic text and quoted song lyrics to question the desires of both performer and audience in pop music forms. Kulash's song "init: A Song for Cynical #4" invokes the desire to write songs, rehearses the possible subject matters, then questions the subjective authenticity of such a gesture. The video literalizes the song's implicit criticism in theoretical (essay) and practical (quoted song lyrics) registers, underlining "individual" desire as a mere shell for mass marketing. 6^ borrows lyrics (presented as text) from British "mope pop" icon Morrissey. The work argues that the consumer's desire for a representation of her own personal "emotion" is a contradiction, sold repeatedly in atomized niches, globally. The work was previously screened in the 2001 World Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam, NL and VideoLisboa, Portugal.

Tony Cokes was born in Richmond, Virginia. His video, installation, music, and public art works often embrace collaborative working methodologies. Cokes' video and multimedia installation works have been included in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Documenta X, Kassel, Germany, and numerous European media festivals. He has received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Captial, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. Cokes is currently Associate Professor in Media Production at Brown University. He lives in Providence, RI.

Residue 9min, video, 1999
Director: Dennis Miller

Residue was written in 1999 and unlike other works by its composer, the animation and music were created simultaneously. The piece explores various archetypal shapes and textures but places them in a virtual landscape. A number of images that appear in the opening become referential throughout the work, and the music adds a second layer of continuity. All visual images were rendered using the POVray scene description language, while the main sonic sources included the Kurzweil K2500 and the Symbolic Sound Kyma System. Final scheduling and compositing were done in AdobePremiere, and final output was done via a DPS Perception video system. For the record, the work consists of 16,200 individual Targa (graphic) files, which live a precarious existence on the composer's hard drive.

Dennis Miller received his Doctorate in Music Composition from Columbia University in 1981. Since that time, he has been on the Music faculty of Northeastern University in Boston where he heads the music technology program and serves on the Multimedia Studies Steering Committee. He is currently Associate Professor. Miller was the founder and served as director of the League-ISCM in Boston from 1982-1988. His works have been performed on concerts and festivals throughout the world, and his music appears on Opus One Records and the Frog Peak Collaborative CD, among others. Miller is an Associate Editor of Electronic Musician magazine, for which he writes about music software and hardware technologies. Since 1998, Miller has also been active as a graphic artist and 3D animator. His animations have been shown at numerous venues throughout the world, most recently the 9th New York Digital Salon, the 2001 Art in Motion screenings, immedia, Sonic Circuits, the 2002 Cuban International Festival of Music, and the 2001 Not Still Art screening. His work was also presented at SIGGRAPH 2001 in the Emerging Technologies gallery. Recent exhibits of his 3D still images include the Boston Computer Museum and the Biannual Conference on Art and Technology, as well as publication in Sonic Graphics: Seeing Sound, published by Rizzoli Books. Miller's music and artworks are available at www.dennismiller.neu.edu/~dmiller.

A series of short videos called "Sound Bites"
Director: Antony Flackett

Antony Flackett is a local video, performance, sound and multimedia artist. He received an MFA from Mass College of Art where he now works managing a computer/video lab for the Computer Art Center. He curates shows for VideoSpace as well as for his own show on Cambridge Community Television called "Tony's Choice." His video work has been show locally and abroad at places such as; the Decordova Museum, The Knitting Factory and the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm Sweden. Visit Antony's web site - www.djflack.com to check out his music, videos and interactive musical animation.

Miniatures, Elastic Slow Dance 2min, video
Video Mandala (excerpt) 6min, video
Director: Emile Tobenfeld (a.k.a Dr. T)

Video Mandalas and Elastic Slow Dance were created on the computer by manipulating still and video images. The process involved is very compute intensive, and cannot be accomplished in real-time. My methodology, however, is very improvisational. I try out different combinations of source material and effects -- when I find something that works, I do more of it, and try to find other material that fits the piece. My goal in this work is to create audio-visual pieces which are music for both the eye and the ear.

Video Mandalas is an exploration of symmetry. The full piece is an hour long, as many kinds of images are processed in the computer with mirror and kaleidoscope algorithms, and then combined.

Elastic Slow Dance is a short piece whose 'theme' is the transformation of a photograph of a bridge in Los Angeles using a program called Elastic Reality. This image is then further processed, and combined with other images.

Dr. T. (Emile Tobenfeld) has been exploring a combination of abstract and representational image making since 1970, which is also the year in which he completed the Ph. D degree from which his stage name is derived. His representational image style is very influenced by the photography of Minor White, and White's dictum "Photographing things for what else they are".His abstract and composited imagery was very influenced by the light shows of the late 60-'s - early '70's, and by experimental films from that era and before.

Dr T. has been performing improvisational imagery combined with music since 1973, and has worked with musicians and groups including Club D'elf, John Voight, Gunther Hampel, Urban Ambience, T. G. Noyes, Roger Miller, Neil Leonard, Immersion Music Salon, ... . He used color slides and sometimes super-8 film for these performances until desktop video technology caught up with his conceptions in 1995. He has been VJ'ing (performing improvised video mixes that accompany live music) using original video and animation since 1997, and performs regularly in the Boston area.

Dr. T has also been creating electronic music since 1976, and founded Dr. T's Music Software, one of the first and most innovative MIDI software companies. His current 'day job' is writing video effects software for Boris FX. He has published three video tapes, Video Mandalas, Things for what Else they are, and The Ambient set, containing his original video and soundtracks. Samples from these videos can be seen at his web site, www.foryourhead.com, as , "Before the Fall -- Images of the World Trade Center", a photographic celebration of a much missed public space.