Editorial [guest editor]
J. B. Hyde · Research Space · 2014
Videomusic is a field of practice that could be seen as a subset of visual music, a term which can be considered today to be familiar enough to speak for itself. This broader area of artistic activity includes digital work, cinema, painting and visual “instruments”, and dates back at least to the 18th century. Fuller definitions of visual music can be found in the writing of Cindy Keefer, Jack Ox and Brian Evans, but a simplistic definition could be “the expression of musical ideas through visual means,” while the term “videomusic” was coined in the 80s by pioneers of the form such as Jean Piché. In conversation with Piché, he provides a useful definition of the form, and explains its significance. Although video dates back to the 60s, in the 80s and 90s it became an “accessible” medium. Readers will be aware that the introduction of music software on domestic computers greatly impacted the production of electroacoustic music, which previously was only possible in elite commercial studios, universities and other dedicated institutions. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, time-based media practices were altered by the introduction of affordable video cameras and video editing software. This opened up many creative possibilities — for our purposes, most interestingly for composers. For many, this was not just a matter of affordability — the process of acquiring video material on tape, and editing and transformation in timeline-based software, mirrored familiar processes in the production of electroacoustic music. Such composers tend to produce work that was significantly different to the visual music that preceded it. This issue of eContact! explores Videomusic through a variety of contributions exploring the history of the field, theoretical frameworks, and a range of contemporary models of practice.