Sound In Pictures is an audiovisual arts project exploring the subject and history of visual music through co-creation, workshops, and live performances. It was conceived in collaboration with a group of creative practitioners from the audiovisual arts scene in London and developed in collaboration with Live Cinema UK. It received some funding support from Anim18, a celebration of British Animation led by Film Hub Wales and Chapter (Cardiff), working with the BFI Audience Network, supported by the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery, by Arts Council England.
The project was initiated as a series of creative workshops and showcase events in 2018 that was commissioned as part of Anim18, a celebration of British Animation led by Film Hub Wales and Chapter (Cardiff), working with the BFI Audience Network, supported by the BFI and by the Arts Council England. This project was devised by The Light Surgeons and produced in collaboration with Live Cinema UK as an R&D project to develop a larger art project that would result in a new tourable live cinema performance, lecture, and workshop programming for UK national touring.
Sound In Pictures began its research and development through the staging of an intensive two-day creative animation workshop held at Stour Space supported by wearable haptic technology partners Subpac.
These workshops brought together a mixture of hearing and participants from the deaf community to explore a series of different analog and digital animation processes and to explore the question “How do we see and feel music?”. We invited a group of 14 participants made up of D/deaf and hearing artists to explore four different animation processes and techniques over the 2 days.
These four creative approaches were designed around the formation of small mixed groups of participants who collaborated to translate images into sound and sounds into images. They involved designing zeotropes, working directly onto 16mm film, the free-form expression on paper in response to a specially composed piece of music, and creating digital stop-frame animations from analog projections.
These sessions were led by artists Christopher Thomas Allen and Tim Cowie from The Light Surgeons, and animators Emily Scaife and Reuben Sutherland from the group Sculpture.
These workshop sessions resulted in the creation of three experimental animated films:
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These can be viewed below.
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This video was created from visual zeotrope animations, designed and created during the workshop sessions by the participants on the module led by audiovisual artist Rueben Sutherland.
The music was created from experimental sound improvisations recorded by the participants in response to their animation and arranged by Tim Cowie.
Credits:
| Lead Artist: | Rueben Sutherland |
| Partisipating Artists: | Alana Barnett, Ayesha Chouglay, Mara Frampton, Sahera Khan, Mariah Robinson, Shamica Ruddock, Nina Thomas, Sonia Tses |
| Editor: | Christopher Thomas Allen |
| Music: | Workshop Participants & Rueben Sutherland |
| Sound Design: | Tim Cowie |
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This video was created from spot frame animations using analog projections and free-form drawing during the workshop sessions by the participants on modules led by audiovisual artist Tim Cowie and animator Emily Scaife.
The music composed by Tim Cowie was broken down into stems and individual instruments to make it easier for the artists to respond to individual elements in the track. The resulting animations were then edited and composited together with the music.
Credits:
| Lead Artists: | Tim Cowie & Emily Scaife |
| Partisipating Artists: | Alana Barnett, Fausto Borioli, Alberto Sande Guiance, Holly Mina Jones, Oliver Kellar, Patricia Puertas, Shamica Ruddock, Mia Wells |
| Editor: | Emily Scaife |
| Music: | Tim Cowie |
These films were presented as a screening program at a special live event that was put together at Rich Mix in East London on December 1st, 2018 that featured a series of live audio-visual performances by the artists involved in the project.
Animator Emily Scaife demoed part of her work exploring the sex life of sea slugs, and audiovisual artist Zach Walker gave his first solo audio-visual cymatics performance, The Light Surgeons remixed material from the workshops along with a deep dive into the historical references to animated visual music. The night ended with the opto-musical agglomerate Sculpture performing their fusion of analog tape loop sounds by Dan Hayhurst with the incredible zeotropes visuals by Rueben Sutherland.
The whole event was interrupted in BSL sign language by interpreter Yusef Gojikian and began with a short talk on the history of visual music and animation by creative director and producer Christopher Thomas Allen.
The Light Surgeons intend to develop this project further through more workshops, performances, and films. Their ambition is to create a touring live cinema performance that takes audiences on a kaleidoscopic journey through the history of experimental animation to explore the connections between sound and image, animation and music with accessibility and an engagement with the deaf community at its heart.
Project credits:
| Creative Direction: | Christopher Thomas Allen & Tim Cowie |
| Collaborating Artists: | Emily Scaife & Rueben Sutherland |
| Creative Producer: | Christopher Thomas Allen |
| Workshop Project Manager: | Jelica Običan |
| Workshop Technical Support: | Malcolm Litson |
| Workshop Creative Assistant: | Nerea Castro |
| Rich Mix Event Producer: | Lisa Brook |
| BSL Sign Language interpreter: | Yusef Gojikian |
