AV performance history has three waves: 1900s synaesthesia, 1960s expanded arts, and 1990s digitalization

The field of audiovisual artistic production has three main historical reference periods. First, around 1900 to the 1930s, modernists explored synaesthesia — correlations between music and the visual arts — stimulated by the new medium of film. Second, the 1960s, when the ‘expanded arts’ movement gave new momentum to sound-image combination, producing expanded cinema and Fluxus intermedia events. Third, from the 1990s on, ongoing digitalization gradually made real-time sound-image combination faster and more powerful, enabling contemporary VJing, live cinema, and live AV performance. Each wave built on the previous: the 1960s re-engaged synaesthetic ideas in a new political context; the 1990s embraced both historical strands and adjusted them to realtime technology. Knowing this arc helps practitioners contextualize their tools and aesthetic choices historically.

Examples

Wave 1: Scriabin’s Prometheus with color organ (1911). Wave 2: Carolee Schneemann’s expanded cinema performances. Wave 3: VJing at raves in the 1990s, algorave from 2012.

Assessment

Assign a practitioner you admire to one of the three waves and explain one way their practice reflects that wave’s defining characteristics.