This book is a phenomenological approach to film sound and film as a whole, bringing all sensory impressions together within the body as a sense of movement. This includes embodied listening, felt sound and the audiovisual chord as a dynamic knot of visual and auditory movements. From this perspective, auditory spaces in film can be used as a pivot between an inner and an external world.
The pioneering film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein is known for the unequalled impact his films have had on the development of cinema. Less is known about his remarkable and extensive writings, which present a continent of ideas about film. Robert Robertson presents a lucid and engaging introduction to a key area of Eisenstein's thought: his ideas about the audiovisual in cinema, which are more pertinent today than ever before. With the advent of digital technology, music and sound now act as independent variables combined with the visual medium to produce a truly audiovisual result. Eisenstein explored in his writings this complex, exciting subject with more depth and originality than any other practitioner, and this is an accessible and original exploration of his ideas. Winner of the Kraszna Krausz Foundation's And/Or Award for Best Moving Image Book of 2009, "Eisenstein on the Audiovisual" is essential reading for students and practitioners of the audiovisual in cinema and related audiovisual forms, including theatre, opera, dance and multimedia.
Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, The Visual Music Film explores the concept and expression of musicality in the visual music film, in which visual presentations are given musical attributes such as rhythmical form, structure and harmony.
The Routledge Handbook of Sound Design offers a comprehensive overview of the diverse contexts of creativity and research that characterize contemporary sound design practice. Readers will find expansive coverage of sound design in relation to games, VR, globalization, performance, soundscape and feminism, amongst other fields. Half a century since its formal emergence, this book considers sound design in a plethora of practical contexts, including music, film, soundscape and sonification, as well as the emerging theoretical and analytical approaches being used in scholarship on the subject. The Routledge Handbook of Sound Design tracks how ideas and techniques have migrated from one field to the next, as professionals expand the industry applications for their skills and knowledge, and technologies produce new form factors for entertainment and information. Collectively, the chapters included in this volume illustrate the robustness and variety of contemporary sound design research and creativity, making The Routledge Handbook of Sound Design essential reading for students, teachers, researchers and practitioners working on sound design in its many forms.
The Synergy of Music and Image in Audiovisual Culture: Half-Heard Sounds and Peripheral Visions asks what it means to understand music as part of an audiovisual whole, rather than separate components of music and film. Bringing together revised and updated essays on music in a variety of media – including film, television, and video games – this book explores the importance of partially perceived and registered auditory and visual elements and cultural context in creating unique audiovisual experiences. Critiquing traditional models of the film score, The Synergy of Music and Image in Audiovisual Culture enables readers across music, film, and cultural studies to approach and think about audiovisual culture in new ways.
This book provides the reader with the knowledge necessary for comprehension of the field of Intelligent Audio Analysis. It firstly introduces standard methods and discusses the typical Intelligent Audio Analysis chain going from audio data to audio features to audio recognition. Further, an introduction to audio source separation, and enhancement and robustness are given. After the introductory parts, the book shows several applications for the three types of audio: speech, music, and general sound. Each task is shortly introduced, followed by a description of the specific data and methods applied, experiments and results, and a conclusion for this specific task. The books provides benchmark results and standardized test-beds for a broader range of audio analysis tasks. The main focus thereby lies on the parallel advancement of realism in audio analysis, as too often today’s results are overly optimistic owing to idealized testing conditions, and it serves to stimulate synergies arising from transfer of methods and leads to a holistic audio analysis.
Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices brings together international artist scholars to explore diverse sound and image practices, applying critical perspectives to interrogate and evaluate both the aesthetics and practices that underpin the audiovisual. Contributions draw upon established discourses in electroacoustic music, media art history, film studies, critical theory and dance; framing and critiquing these arguments within the context of diverse audiovisual practices. The volume’s interdisciplinary perspective contributes to the rich and evolving dialogue surrounding the audiovisual, demonstrating the value and significance of practice-informed theory, and theory derived from practice. The ideas and approaches explored within this book will find application in a wide range of contexts across the whole scope of audiovisuality, from visual music and experimental film, to narrative film and documentary, to live performance, sound design and into sonic art and electroacoustic music. This book is ideal for artists, composers and researchers investigating theoretical positions and compositional practices which bring together sound and image.
Occult Aesthetics: Synchronization in Sound Film opens up an often-overlooked aspect of audiovisual culture which is crucial to the medium's powerful illusions. Author Kevin Donnelly contends that a film soundtrack's musical qualities can unlock the occult psychology joining sound and image, an effect both esoteric and easily destroyed.
The mid-'70s were a time of reckoning. It was also an era of paradoxes, of record making and record breaking, of sold-out shows, and, in the minds of some, sell-out artists. Critics, who once exalted the shamanic characteristics of rock stars, launched full-frontal assaults on mainstream music icons and their tendencies toward overindulgent artistic visions. Amid this confusion, psychedelic and progressive rock pioneers Pink Floyd, unlikely messengers in uncertain times, unleashed their 1975 progressive rock milestone, Wish You Were Here. Refusing to buckle under pressure, Floyd looked inward to produce Wish You Were Here, a conceptual, self-referential album that spoke of spiritual depravation, mental absence, and industry corruption, while, perhaps inadvertently, reflecting the general madness and societal malaise of the mid-'70s. Created in the spirit of camaraderie, Wish You Were Here waged war against the system, better known in Floydlandia as “The Machine ” while paying tribute to a fallen hero and victim of the industry – the creative force fundamental to the band's existence, Syd Barrett. As our world was racked by unsustainable overseas military conflicts, governmental scandals, political assassination attempts, and a near-total erosion of the public trust, Pink Floyd emerged victorious, responding to this external dissonance with their ultimate band statement. What a strange, complex moment in time to have generated a classic. After 1975, Pink Floyd would never be the same – and neither would we.
