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"The dream of creating a color music for the eye, comparable with auditory music for the ear, dates to antiquity…”
--- William Moritz


Welcome to iota, a public benefit arts organization devoted to Abstract Cinema and Visual Music. We preserve classic abstract films, release DVDs, and produce screenings of contemporary and historical work. More about who we are and what we do is here: [About Us] [Programs].
Surf our online library. It's filled with information about Abstract Cinema and Visual Music: Artists, Films and Videos, DVDs, Articles and Links. As with any database, it's a work-in-progress. Please help by submitting additions and corrections to webmaster@iotacenter.org.
Keep Up with the latest news in the world of abstract video, visual music, and iota. We post announcements on the iotaBlog (below) about events, artist's sites and videos, and new additions to the media collection at our study center.
Submit your video to the iota collection. Scholars and curators use the collection for research on-site only, and permission is obtained from the artist for any other use of their work. [Submission Guidelines]
Join our mailing list and receive our newsletter or join the iotaDiscussion group and get all your Visual Music questions answered.


Latest News...
[Calls for Entries] [Events] [New Acquisitions]

Dawn h
03.12.2008   
New DVD Release from iota: Stephanie Maxwell, Animated Works (1984-2007)
Categories: [New Acquisition] 

Audio-visual roller-coaster ride
iota is proud to announce its latest release in the Kinetica Video Library series:
Stephanie Maxwell, Animated Works (1984-2007)

This collection of short films is a testament to the artist's ingenuity. Experimental music scores by collaborators such as Allan Schindler and Greg Wilder, in tandem with Maxwell's propulsive vision, make for truly exhilarating viewing.

Full description and purchase information

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Dawn h
07.10.2007   
Three by Sara Petty
Categories: [New Acquisition] 

Short animations by Sara Petty
In three films we get a glimpse of the early works of 2D animator, Sara Petty. At times playful, at times introspective, Petty's images are rich in texture as well as aesthetics. These works are beautiful motion studies that flow with quiet ease and grace that has not faded with age. Included are: Furies, Picture Window, and Shadrac

DVD: 9min
Comments: 1 
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Dawn h
07.09.2007   
Films by Ying Tan
Categories: [New Acquisition] 

Five works from 1998 to 1999
Ying Tan is an artist and professor at the University of Oregon whose visual computer artworks have been extensively screened worldwide. Frequently collaborating with composer Jeffrey Stolet, Tan's films are elegant both in design and spirit. This collection includes: Elements in Transformation nos. 1 & 2, Un Albor, Mi Vida, and A Swarm of Angry Bees.

DVD: 13min
Website: Ying Tan
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Dawn h
07.09.2007   
NLoops
Categories: [New Acquisition] 

Diverting and delightful
NLoops is an early work by computer animation artist Vibeke Sorensen, with music by Rand Steiger. In this joyful work Sorensen creates parallel spaces containing cycling shapes and patterns. Their dynamic movement turns happily in perfect harmony with the looping music to produce an elated counterpoint between eye and ear.

DVD: 7min
Website: Vibeke Sorensen
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Dawn h
07.07.2007   
color + modulation
Categories: [New Acquisition] 


Rob Tyler demonstrates the power of simplicity
This work is hand painted desktop computer enhanced 16mm film, consisting of simple shapes with modulating concentric colors. With a thoroughly moody musical soundtrack provided by Marc Fisher & Matthew Jones, Brad Ketchen, and Solar Marquardt, the fluctuation of these images can be compared to the hypnotic motion of clay on a potter’s wheel.

From Rob Tyler’s website:

“Color + Modulation is an alluring collection of eight 16mm films that have been painstakingly hand painted frame-by-frame and digitally manipulated on a desktop computer – creating an optically smooth ambient experience.

Described as both visually stunning and atmospherically beautiful, Color + Modulation transforms a television or video screen into an abstract canvas full of playful motion and smooth explosions of color and shape.”

DVD: 60 min
Website: www.vcr100.com
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Dawn h
07.06.2007   
In the Key of Blue
Categories: [New Acquisition] 

A collection of visual music shorts by Nancy Herman
Varying styles of music, ranging from Classical to Jazz to somewhere in between, serve as the backdrop to six short works. For In the Key of Blue Nancy Herman creates a geometric landscape which constantly shifts its designs and colors to evolve with these different musical pieces.

DVD: 20min
Website: www.nancyherman.com
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Dawn h
07.05.2007   
SIGNALDRIFT: a day under the city
Categories: [New Acquisition] 

A collage of image and electronic sound
Overlapping images of degraded film and video mixed with a distressing music score creating an overall environment of unease.

Excerpt from the DVD materials:

"A collaboration between video artist Brandon Bauer and electronic musician Franz Bucholtz, A DAY UNDER THE CITY is the result of digital versus analog fighting for space within a dense structure of sight and sounds."

DVD: 60min
Website: www.lowave.com
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Jeremy schwartz
06.30.2007   
Arcs and Angles from Different Skies
Categories: [New Acquisition] 





Different Skies is an annual meeting of electronic musicians in Acrosanti in the Arizona desert. Their music takes two forms -- precomposed material for debut performance and improvisation. The week-long workshop is designed to help usually solitary electronic musicians gain connections and form a community.

These performances are accompanied by visuals developed by viviographer David Tristram. He uses a combination of 3D computer graphics and prerecorded video to enhance the often serene and wandering music with stunning colorful visuals.

The DVD "Arcs and Angles" is comprised of recordings of 8 improvisations from the 2004 workshop, each accompanied by improvised visuals from David Tristram.

Website: Different Skies
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Dawn h
06.28.2007   
Flame
Categories: [New Acquisition] 


A digital lumia work by George O. Stadnik
With Flame, George Stadnik displays his skill as a lumia artist. Flame is evocative and delicate, where light undulates sinuously and ceaselessly as though trapped underwater. The images are perfectly matched to a calm ambient music track, creating an aesthetic universe unto itself.

DVD: 49min
Purchase: iota Store
Website: www.photonlightguitars.com
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Dawn h
06.27.2007   
_grau
Categories: [New Acquisition] 



Honorary award winner at the Kunst Film Biennale 2004
Excerpt from the DVD materials:

“_grau is a mesmerizing, beautiful and disturbing work of art that fuses dark and light to create organic forms and amorphous shapes. The scenes unfold slowly, elegantly revealing tensions between seemingly simple fragments of life. It feels like a long look at some primordial soup giving birth to some of the world's first life forms, or one-celled organisms that can't quite fully resolve themselves. The soundtrack, with its lonely drones rising and falling, makes us believe we are witnessing a dark creation. The director's most impressive accomplishment was in going beyond the technology of the computer to create something that feels as if it is made of real moments in time, inside a reality only slightly offset from our own.” -Motion Theory

“…_grau is a personal reflection on memories coming up during a car accident, where past events emerge, fuse, erode and finally vanish ethereally. Various real sources were distorted, filtered and fitted into a sculptural structure to create not a plain abstract, but a very private snapshot of a whole life within its last seconds…” -Robert Seidel, on his inspiration for _grau

DVD 10 min
Website: Robert Seidel
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Dawn h
06.20.2007   
Borealis
Categories: [New Acquisition] 



Dimensional fluid light and sound for visual meditation and atmosphere
Lynn Augstein’s Borealis is a work that swirls with light and color from the entire spectrum. Its meditative images are reminiscent for the Northern Lights from which it derives its title. Accompanied by an eclectic music score ranging from synthesizers to acoustic instruments to Tuvan throat singers, Borealis is an otherworldly experience that both calms and invades the senses simultaneously.

Excerpt from the DVD materials:

Visual fluid light images supported
by vibrational music access our senses
through different channels.

When light images and sympathetic
sound vibrations mesh as one,
enlightened visceral experiences follow.

These experiences transport us to a place outside
our rational mind and daily thought patterns.
Time begines to fall away.

These transcendent moments are vehicles
to access other states of consciousness,
connecting us with universal creativity
and inspiration – quieting minds,
calming restless spirits and opening our hearts.

DVD 90min
Website: Cobalt Sun
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Jeremy schwartz
06.19.2007   
Theater Games and Taming the Mind Ox
Categories: [New Acquisition] 










Two works by Stephen Nachmanovitch
excerpt from the DVD materials:

Theater Games

"In June of 2005 I taught a workshop called "Gibberish, the Universal Language" in Seattle, as part of Unexpected Productions' Seattle International Festival of Improv. When several months later, the video arrived, I was inspired to play with this material and make an art piece of it. I took the 12 hours of video and sped them up to 10 minutes, rendered the fuzzy outlines into lollipop colors, and then added a score of electronic string music."

Taming the Mind Ox

"I composed an earlier version of Taming the Mind Ox in 1985 for a retrospective of my visual music pieces at the UCLA music department. That piece required two slide projectors, a dissolve unit and a multitrack reel-to-reel tape. Twenty years later, this subject is still compelling to me, and I wanted a fresh approach. This is a new version with new music, for violin and viola. The video is composed directly on the computer. The pictures [in this film] represent stages on the path of a spiritual journey to the mastery of one's mind-heart (shin). At the beginning, the young man is lost, looking everywhere for the essence of this mind-heart, and suddenly he finds himself chasing and wrestling with a wild ox or bull. Taming that wild, irrational, powerful creature, becoming one with it-- changing and being changed-- finding a still point in the midst of the hubbub of life-- is a lifelong effort and adventure."
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Dawn h
06.13.2007   
Slither
Categories: [New Acquisition] 

A stunning marriage of sight and sound
A collaboration by Jeffers Egan and Jake Mandell, Slither brings together elegant computer animation with a rich ambient music score. At once beautiful and unsettling, this world conceived by Egan and Mandell proves itself difficult to look away from. It is an overall powerful and visceral experience that certainly doesn’t disappoint.

DVD: 41min
Purchase: iota Store
Website: www.jeffersegan.com
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Dawn h
06.12.2007   
Spontaneous Fantasia
Categories: [Events] 

Live performance by J. Walt Adamczyk
The Glendale Community College Planetarium presents cutting-edge immersive 3D real time animation SPONTANEOUS FANTASIA, performed live by artist/programmer/ composer J.Walt Adamczyk. The show represents a brand new art form where the one-hour animated program won’t exist until the artist creates it live in front of the audience.

June 15,16 at 6:30pm & 8:00pm
June 29, 30 at 6:30pm & 8:00pm
Tickets: $6, $10

Website: www.spontaneousfantasia.com
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Dawn h
06.12.2007   
Not Still Art Festival
Categories: [Call For Entries] 

Call for entries for the 12th annual Not Still Art Festival
Not Still Art has announced a call for entries for its 12th annual Festival of abstract and non-narrative electronic motion imaging with music and sound design. The festival will take place Saturday October 6, 2007 in New York City. Past participants have included: Chris Casady, Stephanie Maxwell, JWalt Adamczyk, and Dennis Miller.

Deadline: Postmark June 15, 2007
Date; Place: Oct 6, 2007; New York
Website: www.improvart.com/nsa
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Dawn h
06.12.2007   
Punto y Raya Festival – Back to Basics
Categories: [Call For Entries] 

Call for entries for the 2007 festival
Punto y Raya is the new Dot and Line Festival in Spain, which is returning to abstraction in its most basic form. The competition will accept only those films in which these basic lines and dots avoid all figuration and all narrative. This challenge is open and free to filmmakers worldwide.

Deadline: July 15, 2007
Date; Place: Sep 1-2, 2007; Madrid
Website: www.puntoyrayafestival.com
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Dawn h
06.12.2007   
International Abstract Cinema Exhibition
Categories: [Call For Entries] 

Call for entries!
“The Cultural Association ZAC and Link Campus University of Malta announces the INTERNATIONAL ABSTRACT CINEMA EXHIBITION (ABSTRACTA) in ROME. The purpose of the exhibition is to offer an opportunity of meeting and exchange of experience to the authors of abstract cinema and the possibility for the public to see their works.
ABSTRACTA is open to filmmakers from all over the world.”

Deadline: June 30, 2007
Place: Rome
Website: www.abstractacinema.com
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iotaCenter is a nonprofit organization that provides this information as a public service to film artists and the larger community. We have made sincere efforts to get permission from all rights holders. Please contact us at webmaster@iotacenter.org if you are a rights holder whom we have not yet been able to reach. For all other inquiries, please contact us at info@iotacenter.org