Addictive TV: Audiovisual Delights

8 Mar 2007 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Features, Film / Animation, Music, Worldwide

OPTRONICA is back! From March 14th to March 18th this unique festival about the convergence of visuals and music will be held at both BFI IMAX and NFT in London. OPTRONICA’s presenters Graham and Tolly from Addictive TV just arrived in Tokyo for their performance at Shibuya’s WOMB this Friday. So for today PingMag talks with them about audiovisual matters and what is hot at this year’s program.

Written by Chiemi

First of all, can you tell us what exactly Addictive TV do?

Tolly: As performers, we normally say that we’re audiovisual “AV” artists and producers - simple as that. We perform all over the world, from Brazil to Russia, playing everywhere from clubs and festivals but also art venues like cinemas and museums if we get asked to do live cinema projects as opposed to our normal audiovisual club set.

Graham: And as producers, there’s another two of us: Nick Clarke and Françoise Lamy - as we also work with other artists producing music shows for television, releasing DVDs and also organising events like our night “The Audiovisual Lounge” that ran for many years in London. Another example would be of course our high-profile visual music festival Optronica, which we run in London with the British Film Institute.

Before we get to your festival, can you explain once again what you mean by “audiovisual”?

Graham: Simply a performance where the visual aspect is as important as the music. In film and television, music is used to enhance the pictures. Whereas in AV, pictures are used to enhance the music. For us, the blending of the two or even being able to see and hear the link between them is very important - whether the pictures are film-based or motion graphics. To us, with the kind of work we do, the whole AV movement is really a natural progression of the remix culture applied to both music and images. A lot of people think sampling is only about sound, but that’s no longer a true reflection of what is really happening now.

Tolly: Images are incredibly powerful and can bring out so much more in anybody’s music. We’ve all got eyes as well as ears, and by being an extension of the audio, the video aspect of visual-music can really help create an amazing response, much more than music can alone. Images always add an extra dimension.

So, what does OPTRONICA mean? And what is it all about?

Graham: I came up with it one afternoon while trying to describe what we do and kept thinking of phrases like “optical electronica” – so I simply shortened that to “Optronica”.

Optronica is simply a visual music festival, focusing on the convergence of music and the moving image, working with artists in this field who often don’t fit easily into the program of other standard music festivals or digital arts/film festivals events, where music program isn’t really a strong part of what they do.

Actually I saw the performance by Karl Bartos at the last OPTRONICA in 2005. I remember that he synchronized Kraftwerk’s classics with very minimal graphics and got standing ovations from the audience. I had the feeling that definitely something was happening in the scene. For this year, I know you have lot of interesting people performing - I heard that filmmaker Peter Greenaway and video art pioneer EBN (see more of their work here) are going to perform, too.

Graham: EBN are the total pioneers of audiovisual cut-up and sampling. EBN’s Brian Kane and Gardner Post will be mixing classic EBN material with new works made especially for Optronica. Peter Greenaway will be playing at the IMAX cinema at a special film remix night: there he’ll be performing the UK premiere of his Tulse Luper VJ project in a live cinema double-bill with ourselves.

Peter Greenaway has turned into a VJ!? That sounds very interesting!

Graham: It’s brilliant that a filmmaker like Peter Greenaway has turned his attention to live cinema and the whole VJ world. Yet this is more evidence pointing in the direction that visual music could be called the first real movement of the 21st Century.

What are the other features of this year’s OPTRONICA?

Graham: We have some fantastic illustrated talks this year. As well as Peter Greenaway’s keynote speech on “the death of cinema”. Moreover we have the guys from LA’s Centre for Visual Music who’ve been archiving material of this nature for decades. They’ll be screening ultra-rare works from the 1930s to the 1960s. We also have a talk on Synesthesia art with a renowned professor and we’ll also be screening a new visual music animation made by a synesthesic artist. Also our producer, Françoise, is putting together a special cinema programme about Japanese works. Going with that we’ll have a live performance from Japanese audiovisual artist Ryoichi Kurokawa, playing his first solo show in the UK.

TOLLY: Also this year’s outstanding venue at OPTRONICA will be an installation called “ReacTable” from Barcelona. It’s an amazing tactile synthesizer, a kind of bizarre futuristic game of chess that creates sounds with associated visual iconography when the players move the pieces. Their recent demo on youtube was downloaded over half a million times in just two days!

How does the current audiovisual scene look like to you, as festival organizers?

Graham: It’s great that the scene is now growing faster than five years ago, so everyday new artists are beginning to appear. It’s also great that long-lasting equipment manufacturers like Pioneer, Roland and Numark are finally producing and releasing kits for audiovisual artists. We’ve been heavily involved in the development of some - like the DVJ from Pioneer and the CG-8 visual synthesiser from Roland/Edirol. We’ve also seen a rise in numbers of events similar to OPTRONICA, or existing events starting to examine this field in detail. They seem to appear around the world - which is great news, too.

What do you expect of the audiovisual future?

Graham: For instance, clubs and performance spaces need to go audiovisual from the start - to design the space with screens and video in mind, as well as the sound system. Cinema spaces and art centres need to start programming more “live cinema” performances - but before any of this can happen, there needs to be more artists creating work to perform in these places! I’m not talking about a DJ who gets a VJ to mix some visuals for his DVD set - I’m talking about genuine AV artists who bring audio and video together: people who create both musical and visual elements at the same time.

And what are your own future plans?

Tolly: Besides many gigs we’ve got quite a few tracks and remixes to produce for people. We’re just about to start on a sports remix, building an installation that’s going to tour in China in the year-run-up to the Beijing Olympics 2008. We’re also going back to Brazil in May to play at the Skolbeats Festival.

Graham: Right now we’re remixing the new Japanese anime Tekkon Kinkreet for its promotional campaign. Also we’ve been asked to do six dates across the Middle East - like in Kuwait, Qatar and Dubai which will be amazing. For a separate event, we’re also going to Algeria in May, too.


You sound very busy for a while! Graham and Tolly, thank you very much for taking your time for PingMag today!

Announcement!
If you can’t go to OPTRONICA in London, why don’t you go and see Addictive TV at Womb in Shibuya this Friday? They are going to do an audiovisual performance with their favourite equipment, Pioneer’s DVJ!

DVJ Premium show case “AUDIOVISUAL”
Guest: Addictive TV, ES9, MASANORI MORITA, TECHRIDERS, KAZU MIYAYAMA
Date: Friday, the 9th of March, starting from 11pm
venue: Shibuya Womb
Admission: 3,500 yen

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3. God I think those guys suck. They still tour with 2 year old hollywood material, there real live selfmade output looks its coming straight out of a 1991 home video studio.
   Their hype comes only because they have been around for so long - as for live audiovisual artists there are much much better ones around, they don´t even deserve a mentioning.
   Also their “catering to hollywood” is not exactly encouraging creativity from the newcomers which eventually lets the livevisual arts slowly become a hobby only thing that everyone is doing on their PS2.

   Its sad that “industry” (if there would even be an industry)
   leaders are doing NOTHING to help the small struggling scene but do everything to enrich themself.

   For me addictive tv is 100% marketing 0% creativity 0% cool content (spinning windmills and dancing people is what newbie VJs do)

   Posted by: ty on March 9th, 2007 at 9:14 pm

4. err… dude, i think you’ve got the wrong artists man, you obviously haven’t seen their show! lol i live here in tokyo (i’m canadian) and i sure didn’t see no windmills! lol lol it was amazing remixes of japanese movies, yeah - even willie nelson too! no hollywood movies???? maybe 1 or 2? they did a really cool remix of the sex pistols! I actually really do like what these guys do, have done for a while - its sad you think like that man because from what i know of their work they actually do a lot for other artists - don’t they run the optronica festival in london? i do know they also released other artists work on DVD too - i bought a couple of dvds here. maybe you should send them your work?
   -jeffy

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5. I went to the Addictive TV/Peter Greenaway evening at the IMAX and it was wicked fun! Great interview, thanks v much and look out for my review on Londonist soon :)

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6. I live here in Dubai (yes, ex-pat blah blah blha) Addictive TV are playing here later this week at IBO before they knock it down! Can’t wait. I saw them in Madrid before - simply brilliant! Especially their City of God remix!

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9. err… dude, i think you’ve got the wrong artists man, you obviously haven’t seen their show! lol i live here in tokyo (i’m canadian) and i sure didn’t see no windmills! lol lol it was amazing remixes of japanese movies, yeah - even willie nelson too! no hollywood movies???? maybe 1 or 2? they did a really cool remix of the sex pistols! I actually really do like what these guys do, have done for a while - its sad you think like that man because from what i know of their work they actually do a lot for other artists - don’t they run the optron

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