If cave paintings of drummers are anything to go by, the relationship between visual artists and musicians is older than civilization. In the digital age, that creative relationship has become boundless, the spectrum of sights and sounds and executable ideas growing greater and greater, processed faster and faster. The limits of what artists and musicians are capable of doing together are no longer subservient to tools of production, but to failures of imagination. And, thankfully, in 2014, the creative audio-visual gene is flourishing.
This was the basic premise behind The Connect Sessions, powered by Microsoft: pairing up forward-thinking composers and musical creators with forward-thinking telemedia artists and photographers, inviting them to collaborate, and then seeing what happens. And, it being 2014, documenting the partnerships, publishing not just the final results of their work together, but the creative journey as well.
To guide SPIN behind the curtain and into the studio, we asked for direction from Ian Williams (of Battles), Com Truise and How to Dress Well, three electronic musicians whose computer-programmed palettes are especially diverse and pronounced. Each, in turn, handpicked a visual collaborator: Williams chose artist Ron Amstutz, Truise’s Sean O’Halley picked visual designer Deborah Johnson aka CandyStations; and Dress Well’s Tom Krell picked his long-time visual contributor, the multidisciplinary artist Melissa Matos.
Over the next month, SPIN will publish a progress log of these musicians and artists’ connections and sessions. Tune in to find out if these three alliances bring about founts of innovation, are a well-matched tag-team on a great adventure, or just two people in it for a bit of creative mischief. Come see, read, and listen to what those cave paintings have wrought.
