Musique concrète thinking in visual music practice: audiovisual silence and noise, reduced listening and visual suspension

Hyde, J (2012) 'Musique concrète thinking in visual music practice: audiovisual silence and noise, reduced listening and visual suspension.' Organised Sound, 17 (2). pp. 170-178. ISSN 1355-7718

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1355771812000106

Abstract

This article is based on my creative practice as an electroacoustic composer who has developed a practice of audiovisual composition broadly sited within the field of visual music. A brief contextual survey sites my work by first presenting a personal definition of visual music and of a set of conceptual approaches to work in this field. My practice is framed as an attempt to apply ideas and principles taken from musique concrète in an audiovisual domain. I discuss in particular the idea of reduced listening and propose a visual equivalent, visual suspension. I discuss the problems around reduced listening when applied to concrète ‘real-world’ sounds, and propose that two audio archetypes, silence (or tending-to-silence) and noise (or tending-to-noise), exhibit unique physical and phenomenological properties which sidestep these issues. Observing a similar set of problems around visual suspension, I propose visual counterparts to silence and noise – by relating both to the idea of self-similarity, both temporal and spatial – which exhibit similar properties. In my own work I have found these audiovisual territories to be especially fertile, and to open up avenues for new kinds of sound–image relationships with great creative potential.

Item Type: Article
Divisions: Bath School of Music and Performing Arts
Date Deposited: 30 Jan 2013 11:09
Last Modified: 15 Aug 2021 09:33
URI / Page ID: https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/885
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