What are the connections between sounds and abstract images? What were the first audiovisual instruments? How did music influence Kandinsky's work? What are the most significant audiovisual installations? What relationship is there between VJs and live cinema? And finally, what is synesthesia? Visual Music Masters thoroughly explores past and present research to answer these and many other questions about the relationship between music and abstract art. Covering figures that range from Toulouse-Lautrec to Nam June Paik, from Händel to Xenakis, and from Fischinger to Ikeda, this book illustrates the stages by which the artistic community has embraced the latest technologies and a multi-sensory universe, creating in the process an independent form of expression: visual music.
Adriano Abbado has been working with electronic music since 1975 and with digital art since 1981, and earned a MS from MIT's Media Laboratory in 1988. He taught Computer Graphics at Milan's Istituto Europeo di Design, Electronic Music at Turin's Conservatory, and Audiovisual Art at UC Santa Barbara. His interests span from traditional Asian music to astrophotography to online trading. His works have been shown in Barcelona, Chicago, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Shanghai, Venice and Washington, DC.