Joseph Hyde

I’ve made a few revisions for the new sound/video piece I made for CCRMA for my ‘retrospective’ (that word makes me feel a bit old) at the CCRMA stage last month (see Feb post below).  I think it’s finished now.  You can take a look at it here.

I haven’t posted anything for a while - about time I did! I’ve just been to California for a couple of weeks, which was fantastic.  The first part of my trip was to Los Angeles – here I spent a few days at the Center for Visual Music, who have recently been bequeathed the archives of Oskar Fischinger, a pioneer in early abstract cinema and visual music.  I was looking at scores, diagrams, sketches and writings, most of which have been unseen for decades.  I also visited Fischinger’s house in Long Beach to talk to Barbara, his surviving daughter, and her dogs.  This research is towards a large-scale project examining Fischinger’s creative process.

The second part of my stay was spent at Stanford University, where I gave several talks; in the Music Department, CCRMA – amazing place; met John Chowning and Max Matthews(!), and the Intermedia Lab – a new institute devoted to interdisciplinary and multimedia work.  I also presented a retrospective of my work, including a new sound and video piece, soon to appear here!

Possibly a strange picture to choose for this post - this is from the Musee Mecanique, an arcade full of ancient seaside entertainments (everything from old ‘what the butler saw’ stereograms to very very early video games machines), which I found entirely by accident in San Francisco and absolutely LOVED.

Well, it happened.. It went pretty well I think; we had a very interesting crowd of people, and they were a friendly bunch too - the whole thing had a really nice atmosphere, and I think everybody had fun.  I was really pleased by the range of papers and presentations we had - everything from some quite intricate theory to ‘mad professor’ style inventions and some great artist presentations and performances.  I was quite bowled over by the amount of material we were sent - we were quite spoilt for choice in the end.  The site now has quite a lot of documentation of the event up there - Maura McDonnell also wrote nice blog on the event.

I’m hoping this won’t end here.  With several colleagues around the UK I’m plotting the formation of some kind of network for visual music (etc.) practitioners, and I’m already thinking about another symposium (with better planning and more money!)

I’ve been too busy organising this to write about it, but we’re running a symposium on visual music at Bath Spa University on the 19th/20th September. I’m using the words ‘visual music’ very broadly - we’re looking at audiovisual relationships in quite a broad way, in work across abstract cinema, experimental animation and audiovisual composition.

There are papers / presentations, lots of films (16mm celluloid and digital) an installation or two and a live performance. Though I say so myself, it’s turned out really well - we have some great work to show, and some very interesting people coming along. You can find out more here

(Image, and ‘Seeing Sound’ title - Mary Ellen Bute)

I’ve not been all that active creatively for the last few months, but here are a few little things:

1) I did finish off End Transmission, which you can find here. I also finished the Surround Sound mix, which was a fun and interesting experience. I’ve not been able to find an easy way to put that online, but if anyone’s interested, I might be persuaded to send out a DVD…

2) It’s come to my notice that my movies don’t work on an iPhone. I’ve uploaded some of them to a handy site called episodic - iPhone botherers can find them here.

3) The last ‘little thing’ is our daughter Beatrix, who arrived four months ago and is ace. She might have something to do with the ‘not been all that active’ mentioned above, and also the appearance of propellephants (© J.Hyde 2009) etc. in our lives..

I did a performance of ‘videomusic’ as part of the GEMdays festival in Huddersfield at the end of January.  I played some old favorites, but decided to use this as an opportunity to finish a new piece.  It was a bit of a rush, but I got something together - a sound/video piece called End Transmission.  It’s a bit of a departure/crazy new direction for me - both audio and visual material were made together, using a novel process whereby audio and video material is broadcast and received back again in a little homemade closed-loop tv/radio system.  What’s interesting is the way sound and image can be made to interfere with each other in quite a performative way.  

I’m still tinkering with the piece (I’m currently working on a 5.1 mix), but you can find the work-in-progress here.

This is my all-new website, replacing the original Periphery site which I’ve finally retired.  I’ve kept the new site nice and simple and focused on content - my aim is for the site to be as media-rich as possible. My old site was just ‘about’ my work - here I aim to actually show my work, pretty much in its entirety. Already, there’s nearly two and a half hours of video clips and one and a half of audio on here. And counting…

I also aim to keep the site alive and regularly updated. This front page will function as a blog of sorts, documenting what I’m up to: projects, research, teaching or just random thoughts. Anything that ’sticks’ is likely to end up in one of the permanent pages you’ll find through the menus on the top right. Here, under Sound, Video, Live, Installation and Dance, you’ll find information on the work I’ve done over the years as well as, yes, lots of video and audio.

Update: with some help from Andrew Walker, I think the last gremlins have been fixed. Thanks Andy! Thanks also to Coral for a few earlier emergency interventions. If you discover anything awry, please leave a comment here, or email me - see the About section.

Selected highlights: Zoetrope | GoldGlow | subliminalTV | Periphery | Amplified | Burnt Out | anatomica#3 | Japan Workshops