dB Festival 2008: Optical 1

Historically, visual media art and electronic music have maintained a fruitful coexistence, from the earliest mid-20th Century works of Le Corbusier and Edgard Varêse to the most recent sensory extremes found in the likes of Ryoji Ikeda's digital multimedia environments. This relationship of the audio-visual in the realm of new media and sound has resulted in some of the most forward thinking works of the past few decades and fueled significant leaps forward in both application and development of media technologies for live performance, installations and video art. Since its inception Decibel has avidly explored this relationship through film, VJ performances, AV installations, original art and multimedia workshops.

This year, in celebrating our fifth anniversary, Decibel will be hosting not one, but two OPTICAL Multimedia Showcases as part of the 2008 program. Both showcases will be exploring the intersections between audio and video technology through live real-time collaborations, featuring leading-edge artists in both the audio and video world.

Previous OPTICAL Showcase has produced provocative and visionary performances from Ryuichi Kurokawa, Speedy J & Scott Pagano, Randy Jones and Raster-Noton's Olaf Bender. This year continues that tradition with a diverse body of artists working in abstract electronic music and new visual media including: magnetic tape composer William Basinski (New York), Library Tapes (Sweden), software designer and author Akira Rabelais (Los Angeles), ambient composer Jeff Greinke (Tucson), filmmaker and motion graphics designer Scott Pagano (Los Angeles), Carole Kim (Los Angeles), offthesky (Kentucky), Son of Rose (Seattle) and Scott Sunn (Seattle).