Live Visuals: History, Theory, Practice

This volume surveys the key histories, theories and practice of artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers, architects and technologists that have worked and continue to work with visual material in real time.

Covering a wide historical period from Pythagoras’s mathematics of music and colour in ancient Greece, to Castel’s ocular harpsichord in the 18th century, to the visual music of the mid-20th century, to the liquid light shows of the 1960s and finally to the virtual reality and projection mapping of the present moment, Live Visuals is both an overarching history of real-time visuals and audio-visual art and a crucial source for understanding the various theories about audio-visual synchronization. With the inclusion of an overview of various forms of contemporary practice in Live Visuals culture – from VJing to immersive environments, architecture to design – Live Visuals also presents the key ideas of practitioners who work with the visual in a live context.

This book will appeal to a wide range of scholars, students, artists, designers and enthusiasts. It will particularly interest VJs, DJs, electronic musicians, filmmakers, interaction designers and technologists.

Steve Gibson is an interactive media artist and audio-visual performer. He has presented at many world-leading venues, including Ars Electronica, Banff Centre for the Arts, the European Media Arts Festival and Cabaret Voltaire. He is an Associate Professor in Innovative Digital Media at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK. www.telebody.ws

Stefan Arisona is a computer scientist and artist with interests in computer graphics, extended reality, urban planning and digital art. He is a member of the Scheinwerfer VJ collective and leads XR software development at the Esri R&D Center Zurich, Switzerland. https://robotized.arisona.ch

Donna Leishman is a media artist, designer and researcher. Recent works include an AR project To Have & To Hold and Front, a modern cautionary tale about social media. She is an Associate Professor in Communication Design at Northumbria University. http://6amhoover.com

Atau Tanaka conducts research in music human–computer interaction (HCI), focusing on embodied musical interaction. By using muscle sensing in performance, the human body becomes a musical instrument. He carries out his work at Goldsmiths, the Bristol Interaction Group and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Paris Nord. www.ataut.net