Extended perception. Cartography of the practices in contemporary audiovisuals environments

In this respect, the aim of the present dossier is to define a framework for inquiring into the notion of audiovisual environment on the contemporary electro-scene, by linking electro acoustic and electronic music to visual image, installations, and other emerging projects in the area of media arts [AA.VV. 2010]. This research intends to address a rather common misunderstanding concerning the relationship between sound, music and images. In fact, we aim to demonstrate that audiovisual art is not just the simple combination of music and images, but it has to do with a space opened by an active interaction between different forces. It is, in other words, a space preserved for something that may come unexpectedly. In this sense, what is unexpected is something that may not have an immediate meaning, but nevertheless acquires an indescribable inner pulse that vibrates through a tension. At the bottom of this pulsation it is possible to recognize a particular energy that must be developed and can take the shape of a sound or even of something else, organising a set of different points of convergence between various dimensions. A sound pulse, for example, can pass under the treatment and control of the image and vice versa [Hegarty, 2014]. Thus, relationships between these elements are not just a matter of contiguity, but they rest on a process of composition that will be at the core of our thinking and conversations with artists.