This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(October 2010) |
Mark Nugent was a prolific British and Canadian filmmaker, digital artist and writer. [1]
He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Nugent emigrated to Canada with his family when he was seven.
Nugent received a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University. He went on to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on scholarship and obtained a Master's in Fine Arts for Film Production.
Nugent collaborated with a number of musicians (including Download, Dead Voices on Air, [2] Coil, FAT, Nimrod, Hafler Trio, Bruce Gilbert, Vent du Mont Scharr and Elliott Sharp) to create experimental films and live presentations. He founded and toured with Roughage, a Montreal-based mixed-media performance group, and briefly worked for Chicago's H-Gun, producing commercial music videos. Until recently, his art was part of a genre that rarely attracted critical attention from anyone other than his peers. [3]
In the late 1980s, Nugent travelled with the band FAT to Morocco and collected Super-8 footage that he would later use in his 1989 video "Inverse Proportions" on YouTube for the Elliott Sharp-led ensemble Carbon, and in his 1992 "Dark River" video on YouTube for the band Coil. [4]
Nugent produced a large number of hallucinatory films in the early nineties, combining his acute ability to optically process seemingly abstract images and colours, with super 8 footage and film. In the tradition of William S. Burroughs, Chris Marker, Werner Herzog, Stan Brakhage, and David Bohm, Nugent used a variety of media to explore his fascinations: the realms of consciousness, perception, alchemy, mysticism and quantum physics.
Nugent created films for a number of post-industrial bands and projected his work live, to great effect on the Download tour of Europe in 1996. [5] In 1997, Nugent founded the website Psilence Image Environments to showcase his digital image work. [6]
For ten years Nugent worked on numerous digital images and cut-up writings, collaborating on a number of projects including the film Alchemical Conversations (2003), and developing websites and commercial CD releases. Most recently, he collaborated on a series of images with Aaron Campbell.
Nugent died on 16 December 2009 of a heart attack aged 48. [7] His funeral was held on 9 January 2010 in Montreal. Nugent's preserved video work is to be included in a collection housed in museums around the world.
Devo, often stylized as DEVO, is an American new wave band from Akron, Ohio, formed in 1973. Their classic line-up consisted of two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales, along with Alan Myers. The band had a No. 14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", the song that gave the band mainstream popularity.
Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works streamed online, distributed as video tapes, or DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, gardener, and gay rights activist.
Download is a Canadian electronic music group formed by Dwayne Goettel and Kevin Crompton of Skinny Puppy in 1994. The initial lineup also included Off & Gone's Phil Western and Mark Spybey of Dead Voices on Air, but has since been particularly fluid, with Key and Western being the only constant members following Goettel's death. Download's music has been described as post-industrial, drawing from the band's genesis as part of Skinny Puppy but also sharing common stylistic ground with such artists as Aphex Twin and Autechre. The primary instrumentation common throughout their albums is a blend of synthesizers and sampled instruments; the music is particularly centered on elements of percussion and rhythm.
Coil were an English experimental music group formed in 1982 in London and dissolved in 2005. Initially envisioned as a solo project by musician John Balance, Coil evolved into a full-time project with the addition of his partner and Psychic TV bandmate Peter Christopherson. Coil's work explored themes related to the occult, sexuality, alchemy, and drugs while influencing genres such as gothic rock, neofolk and dark ambient. AllMusic called the group "one of the most beloved, mythologized groups to emerge from the British post-industrial scene."
Peter Martin Christopherson was an English musician, video director, commercial artist, designer and photographer, and former member of British design agency Hipgnosis.
Sebastian Philip Bierk, known professionally as Sebastian Bach, is a Canadian-American singer who achieved mainstream success as the frontman of the hard rock band Skid Row from 1987 to 1996. He has acted on Broadway and has made appearances in film and television such as Trailer Park Boys, The Masked Singer and Gilmore Girls. He continues his music career as a solo artist.
Alchemy: Dire Straits Live is a double album and the first live album by the British rock band Dire Straits, released in March 1984 by Vertigo Records internationally, and by Warner Bros. Records in the United States. Recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on 22–23 July 1983, the album features songs from the band's first four albums, the ExtendedancEPlay EP and Mark Knopfler's Local Hero soundtrack. Many of the songs have reworked arrangements and extended improvisational segments. The album cover is taken from a painting by Brett Whiteley.
Greg and Colin Strause, known professionally as The Brothers Strause, are American film directors, producers and special effects artists. They are known for directing the 2007 film Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem and the 2010 film Skyline. The brother duo are also founders of Hydraulx, a special effects company.
Visual music, sometimes called color music, refers to the creation of a visual analogue to musical form by adapting musical structures for visual composition, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds or music into a related visual presentation. An expanded definition may include the translation of music to painting; this was the original definition of the term, as coined by Roger Fry in 1912 to describe the work of Wassily Kandinsky. There are a variety of definitions of visual music, particularly as the field continues to expand. In some recent writing, usually in the fine art world, visual music is often confused with or defined as synaesthesia, though historically this has never been a definition of visual music. Visual music has also been defined as a form of intermedia.
Linwood G. Dunn, A.S.C. was an American pioneer of visual special effects in motion pictures and an inventor of related technology. Dunn worked on many films and television series, including the original 1933 King Kong (1933), Citizen Kane (1941), and Star Trek (1966–69).
Cyclobe (1999–present) are a music duo formed by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown. They make hallucinatory electronic soundscapes by mixing sampled and heavily synthesized sounds with acoustic arrangements for a variety of instruments including hurdy-gurdy, border pipes, duduk and clarinet. Their approach draws upon diverse forms, including acousmatic, drone music, sound collage, folk and progressive rock.
James Whitney, younger brother of John, was a filmmaker regarded as one of the great masters of abstract cinema. Several of his films are classics in the genre of visual music.
Alchemy has had a long-standing relationship with art, seen both in alchemical texts and in mainstream entertainment. Literary alchemy appears throughout the history of English literature from Shakespeare to modern Fantasy authors. Here, characters or plot structure follow an alchemical magnum opus. In the fourteenth century, Chaucer began a trend of alchemical satire that can still be seen in recent fantasy works like those of Terry Pratchett.
The Dangerously in Love Tour was the debut concert tour by American recording artist Beyoncé. Although the tour was intended to showcase songs from her debut solo album, Dangerously in Love, (2003) the set list also contained a special segment dedicated to Beyoncé's girl group Destiny's Child and featured songs from her 2003 film The Fighting Temptations. The stage was simple and featured a large LED screen in the back that displayed video images of Beyoncé and her dancers, as well as some images from her music videos and some prerecorded images. The tour was reviewed negatively by Dave Simpson of The Guardian who graded it with two stars out of five. The Dangerously in Love Tour only reached Europe and Beyoncé's performance, at the Wembley Arena in London, was filmed and later released on the CD/DVD Live at Wembley (2004).
Richard Roger Reeves is a Canadian animated filmmaker. He is known for his whimsical abstract animated films created using a drawn on film technique.
"Spellbound" is the first single released by Lacuna Coil's fifth studio album, Shallow Life. The song is their first chart entry on the U.S. Billboard charts since "Our Truth" in 2006. It debuted at #36 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and has become their first Top 30 single on that chart. The single officially debuted on 21 February 2009, when the band performed at the Soundwave Festival in Brisbane, Australia.
Robert Blalack was a Panama-born American mass-media visual artist, independent filmmaker, and producer. He is one of the founders of Industrial Light & Magic. Blalack received the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1978 for his work on the first Star Wars film. He also received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in 1984 for his work on the 1983 television film The Day After. Blalack directed experimental films and mixed-media television commercials, and he produced visual effects for theme park rides.
Dick Carruthers is an English music video and film director, based in London, England. He directed the Led Zeppelin Celebration Day film and The Rolling Stones Bridges To Babylon DVD as well as many other live music videos. Carruthers' work on the Oasis Definitely Maybe DVD was nominated for two BAFTAs.
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival is an annual film festival and the flagship event of Alchemy Film & Arts that takes place each year in the Scottish Borders town of Hawick. Founded in 2010, it has grown to be considered as one of the key fixtures of experimental and artist film within the UK and Europe.