Panel discussion: Audio Visual Avantgarde
Norbert Pfaffenbichler (AT) / Lillevan (artist, DE) / Dieter Daniels (art historian, media scientist, University of Leipzig, DE) / Sabine Sanio (musicologist, cultural scientist, KHB Berlin, DE) / Moderation: Mirjam Wenzel (literary critic, University of Munich, curator, DE)
 
The history of audiovisual art and media projects is closely linked to the history of technological developments and attests to the attempt both to make the materiality of the medium itself visible and audible, respectively, and to the desire to draw the medium, the artist and the recipient into a closer relationship with one another. It is, in this respect, a part of the history of the modern avant-garde and shares with the latter a certain tendency to make a fetish of technology. VJs have established their role in club-land with increasing success in recent years. Nonetheless, they are heading towards a conceptual crisis in that they continue to relegate their idea of an image archive or flood of images – of the power of the visual, in brief – to a position that is subordinate or secondary to the acoustic dimension. On the other hand, audiovisual co-operations between visual artists and musicians that stage image and sound as interdependent and mutually enriching media are very much on the increase. This hybrid of media art and electronic live-act is leading to experiential forms in club-land which are informed less by style, social interaction and atmosphere than by heightened concentration and contemplation.
 
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Antoine Schmitt & Vincent Epplay (FR) – „Display Pixel 3“
Display Pixel 3 marks a new step in the collaboration between Vincent Epplay and Antoine Schmitt. Epplay improvises in a live setting, playing sound and music against sensory semi-autonomous audio and visual scenes programmed by Antoine Schmitt, who modulates their parameters live. Unlike the classical DJ/VJ setting, which prefers a vocabulary made of collage and juxtaposition, Display Pixel 3 deals with the physical relationships between image, sound, movement and causality, whereby the notion of control and of its loss is central. In a visual universe inspired formally and conceptually by the mechanisms of videogames, the audio fluxes and the singular sounds of Vincent Epplay literally give life to the scenes programmed by Antoine Schmitt.
 
 
Semiconductor (UK) – „Sonic Inc.“
Semiconductors' new live performance software allows complete real time creation via user interaction. The imagery drawn responds to sound inputs, producing audio created and controlled environments. Semiconductors performance charts the beginning of an artificial world and its shapeless inhabitants. We follow the evolution of a unformed landscape and its simple life forms, which grow according to the sound-scape and learn to move autonomously, evolve, respond to and build their own environments.