Visual Music as Performance Art
Terry Trickett performs Visual Music worldwide at new media festivals and conferences. Sometimes the inspiration for his pieces is primarily musical; at other times, he uses Visual Music as a means of tackling a difficult subject or putting forward a controversial point of view. The subjects he chooses range far and wide, often taking him into unchartered territory – places where, sometimes, he invades the realm of science and, with the aid of music, brings the worlds of science and art closer together. In creating a piece of Visual Music, his aim is to share and communicate an idea through a process that combines animated visual imagery with musical performance, usually on solo clarinet. As a participatory form of communication, he finds that Visual Music is affective because it succeeds in engaging with audiences at both an intellectual and emotional level.
Starting with the most recent presentations/performances, the list below summarises the range of subjects tackled so far. Terry Trickett still has many as yet unexplored ideas to pursue.
2021 EVA, Florence (online), 'PATTERNS OF EXISTENCE: Discovering order through Visual Music'.
2021 Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA), London (online), 'NEW MEDIA ART AS A VEHICLE FOR RESEARCH AND INNOVATION'.
2021 ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL, 'Visualising Music', EVA London's contribution to the world-wide (online) Ars Electronica Festival (Sepember 8 - 12) as part of the UK's Invisible Garden 'where the magic happens', (three authors: Sean Clark, Jon Weinel, Terry Trickett).
2020 Taboo, Transgression, Transcendence, Vienna (online), 'PATTERNS OF EXISTENCE: from cosmic to corporate and neural to musical.
2020 Taboo, Transgression, Transcendence, Vienna (online), 'PASSEGGIATA: a paradigm for the times in which we live'.
2020 EVA Florence (online), 'THE TRANSCENDENCE OF VISUAL MUSIC: Creating Images in the Mind and Brain'.
2020 Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA), London, 'EXPERIENCING VISUAL MUSIC FROM AN ARTIST'S AND LISTENER'S POINT OF VIEW'.
2019 Consciousness Reframed, Porto, 'A stride towards sentient cities: ARCHITECTURE AS PERFORMANCE ART'.
2019 "Present Future" Art and Technology Award, Beijing, 'CITIRAMA' awarded finalist certificate as 'Outstanding Entry' in Projection Art.
2019 Art Futura, Processing the Future at Iklectic, London, 'EXPERIENCING VISUAL MUSIC through three works produced by Terry Trickett.
2019 Electronic Visualisation of the Arts (EVA), London, 'A CYBERNETIC CLARION CALL TO THE ARTS' COMMUNITY'.
2019 International Symposium on Computational Media Art, Hong Kong, 'SHAPES OF THE FUTURE: when Art Machines pass the Turing Test'.
2018 Electronic Visualisation of the Arts (EVA), London, 'ARCHITECTURE AS MUSIC' (This presentation included a performance of CITIRAMA).
2018 Electronic Visualisation of the Arts (EVA), London, 'Turing’s Genius – Defining an apt microcosm' (A panel presentation which included a performance of VISUAL MUSIC OF THE BRAIN AND MIND).
2018 Bridges, Stockholm, 'FROM THE CHEESEGRATER TO THE PARTHENON: A Musical Odyssey' (This presentation included a performance of CITIRAMA).
2018 International Congress Synesthesia, Science and Art, Granada, Spain, 'OLIVIER MESSIAEN’S ESOTERIC WORLD OF SOUND AND COLOUR'.
2017 Consciousness Reframed, Beijing, 'An Astonishingly Intricate Architecture: VISUAL MUSIC OF THE MIND AND BRAIN'.
2017 Intetain, Madeira, Portugal, 'CITIRAMA: where the patterns of architecture join the rhythms of music'.
2017 Melbourne Animation Festival, 'CITIRAMA: where the patterns of architecture join the rhythms of music' (This was not a live performance).
2017 Intetain, Madeira, Portugal, 'RAGATIME: AN EXPLORATION OF THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE OF RAGA PERFORMANCE'.
2017 Balance Unbalance, A Sense of Place, Plymouth, UK, 'RAGATIME:THE SHORT-LIVED ASCENDENCY OF FATEHPUR SIKRI'.
2017 V&A Digital Futures and Electronic Visualisation of the Arts (EVA), London, 'RAGATIME: GLIMPSES OF AKBAR’S COURT AT FATEHPUR SIKRI'.
2016 Brighton Digital Festival, 'CITIRAMA: where the patterns of architecture join the rhythms of music'.
2016 Punto y Raya Festival, Karlsruhe, Germany, 'ALLEMANDE FOR PUNTO Y RAYA'.
2016 Brighton Digital Festival, UK, 'SHAPES: CREATING DIGITAL SIMULACRA OF ABSTRACT ART'.
2016 CARU (Arts re Search Conference) Oxford, UK, 'SHAPES: CREATING DIGITAL SIMULCRA OF ABSTRACT ART'.
2016 V&A Digital Futures and Electronic Visualisation of the Arts (EVA), London, 'REVEALING THE COLOURS OF THE APOCALYPSE'.
2016 EvoMUSART, Porto, Portugal, 'TURINGALILA: Visual Music on the Theme of Morphogenesis'.
2016 Balance Unbalance, Colombia, 'TURINGALILA: Visual Music on the Theme of Morphogenesis'.
2015 UVM (Understanding Visual Music), Brasilia, 'GIVING VISUAL FORM TO ABÎME DES OISEAUX'.
Terry Trickett's Published Papers
Many of Terry Trickett’s Visual Music pieces are underpinned by extensive research, which has led to published papers as follows:
'A stride towards sentient cities: Architecture as performance art'
'Turingalila: Visual Music on the Theme of Morphogenesis'
‘Revealing the colours of the apocalypse through Visual Music’
‘Ragatime: Glimpses of Akbar’s court at Fatehpur Sikri’
'New Media Art as a Vehicle for Research and Innovation'
‘Architecture as Music: A personal journey through time and space’
‘Turing’s Genius – Defining an apt microcosm’ (four authors)
‘An astonishingly intricate architecture: Visual Music of the Brain and Mind’
‘A Cybernetic Clarion call to the Arts’ Community’
'Patterns of Existence: Discovering Order through Visual Music' (page 60 - 67)
Terry Trickett, designer and architect
In a previous life, Terry Trickett ran his own architectural practice, Trickett Associates (1972 - 2004). Here, he carried out numerous space planning and interior design projects for large organisations as well as acting in an advisory role when defining overall strategies for change and how these might impact on buildings. Another important strand of activity was exhibition and display design, often carried out in conjunction with Trickett and Webb, graphic designers. Projects embraced museum displays, world travelling exhibitions and trade shows.
For one client, the Wellcome Trust, both strands of activity came into play when premises recreated for the Trust at 210 Euston Road, London, were extended to include a Gallery at street level. The first exhibition 'Look Hear' was devoted to the art and science of the ear. Based on material supplied by the University of Bristol, it enabled visitors to follow the pathway of sound into the hidden depths of the ear. Works of art were juxtaposed against electron microscopic images of the ear in order to explore the concept of 'seeing the way we hear'. Importantly, the exhibition succeeded in attracting audiences from both the scientific and arts communities. It was the runaway success of Look Hear that led eventually to Wellcome's sponsorship of Sci-Art (1997 - 2006), a story told recently in supplemental material for my article in Leonardo 2021.
Terry Trickett performing 'SHAPES OF THE FUTURE: when Art Machines pass the Turing Test' at the International Symposium on Computational Media Art, Hong Kong, 2019.
In the list alongside, Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA) Conferences are conspicuous; to an increasing extent they provide the setting for Terry Trickett's Visual Music presentations and performances - ie. all those shown in yellow. For this reason, the status of EVA within the realm of new media art requires some explanation.
EVA Conferences act as a linked set of interdisciplinary meeting places for networking between new media artists and activists in the cultural, scientific and technological sectors. They started in London, 1990, and since then over 200 EVA Conferences have been held round the world. EVA aims to bring together diverse types of cultural heritage (such as museums and libraries as well as academia) with artists active in all forms of new media art.
In 2021, EVA London was invited to take part in the 'Ars Electronica Festival for Art, Technology & Society'. The response prepared by Sean Clark, Terry Trickett and Jon Weinel (all members of EVA London's organising committee) gave precedence to the subject of 'music visualisation', as can be seen in the above video 'UK Gardens/EVA London: Visualising Music'.
'Music' as an international language takes on an ever-increasing role in promoting the exchange of ideas across the world-wide EVA community. EVA London acts as a focal point for this activity by promoting new adventures into music visualisations.
In Jon Weinel's 'Cyberdream', participants can playfully create psychedelic sounds and images as they 'paint with sound' in a synaesthetic virtual reality.
Terry Trickett, with reference to his pieces CITIRAMA and Abîme des oiseaux, explains how mental-visual-imagery plays an invisible, yet pivotal, role in both the creation of music and the way in which it is listened to.
It is through discussion of these contrasting approaches to the creation of music visualisations that the EVA London presentation at Ars Electronica communicates key concepts regarding music visualisations of the future.
In conclusion, Sean Clark makes the point that 'music visualisation' is only one of a diverse range of subjects covered by EVA's world-wide conferences. Others, to name just a few, are: Cultural Heritage, Museums and Social Media, Big Data Visualisations, Animation, Neuroscience, Interdisciplinary Creativity and all forms of New Media Art.
Poster for Terry Trickett's performance of Visual Music at the Brighton Digital Festival, 2016.
The first exhibition in the Wellcome Trust's 210 Gallery featured 'seeing the way we hear'. Designed by Trickett Associates, 'Look Hear' captured the attention of both the scientific and arts communities. For Wellcome, it substantiated the idea that art could assist in the public's understanding of science - an idea that was eventually made manifest in The Legacy of Sci-Art.