2008 Woodie Awards
When sight meets sound
The Raytheon Amphitheatre was transformed into a 12-hour film festival, featuring 120 visual music films from filmmakers around the world.
Julie Balise
Issue date: 5/9/07 Section: The Inside
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The short film, "Time Streams," was the first work shown at the Visual Music Marathon April 28. The 12-hour festival in the Raytheon Amphitheatre featured works from around the world and drew a crowd of about 250 Northeastern student, faculty and community members.
The event, which was curated by music professor Dennis Miller, was part of the Boston CyberArts Festival, a 16-day event featuring digital artwork in all media.
The films screened on Saturday exemplified "visual music," a film genre Miller described as an "integration of music and sound in really unique ways." Similar to the Windows Media Player's music visualizer, examples of the genre can be seen in the original 1940 Disney film, "Fantasia."
Half of the films shown at the festival were selected out of a pool of 300 by Miller and Northeastern visual arts professors Ann Steuernagel and Isabel Meirelles. The other 60 works featured were invited by the event's producers to participate in the festival.
"When you add it all up you have 120 films that cover an 80-year period, plus the live performance - nothing like this has ever been done before, much less in a 24-hour period," Miller said.
While this is the first time Northeastern has hosted a visual music festival, the film genre is not new to campus.
"This is something that I do, this is something that our students do, and people all around the world," Miller said. "I thought it would be a great thing to bring to Northeastern."
Although most were produced in America, the films represented 25 countries including Canada, Japan, Brazil and Germany. The works covered a variety of moods, ranging from the playful "IV.6" and the comedic "I Haven't Read A Book in At Least Five Years" to the dramatic "Petal Scream" and the Iraq war footage in "I've Got A Guy Running."
"IV.6," by American film-maker Mike Winkelmann blended percussion-heavy upbeat music with bright animation. Stars circled, feet kicked and balloons and ladybugs dashed across the screen.
Eric Sheets, a sophomore civil engineering major, said he had experienced visual music before at "weird art museums" and he enjoyed "IV.6."
"The music was pretty cool, the video was the perfect length and it was an interesting tune," he said.
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